


The Prodigal Son

by Bebec



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Complete, Established Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar, Eventual Smut, F/M, Family Issues, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff and Smut, Guilt, Hurt Lucifer, Hurt Lucifer Morningstar (Lucifer TV), Identity Issues, Lucifer Redemption, Near Death Experiences, Not Beta Read, POV Chloe Decker, POV Lucifer, Post-Devil Face Reveal to Chloe Decker, Post-Season/Series 04 Finale, Prompt Fic, Shame, Temporary Character Death, Translation, Tumblr Prompt, Tumblr: luciferprompts, confused devil, established deckerstar, unexpected changes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:55:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24294703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bebec/pseuds/Bebec
Summary: This is a story as old as the world, the story of the Prodigal Son. And an even older fact is that he is anyone's Son anymore.He's the Devil.__@Luciferprompts(revealed in chapter 4 end notes)Post S4 finale.
Relationships: Chloe Decker/Lucifer Morningstar
Comments: 51
Kudos: 139





	1. An old feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Not a big interlude for 'I will not say goodbye', don't worry. I just needed to take my mind off it by working actively on this prompt. So, not a big story (first written as a one-shot but too long already with just the half of it written) - maybe six… seven chapters?
> 
> I've 3 chapters ready so far, 'plan to write the 4th (start it, at least) tomorrow. 
> 
> Mostly Lucifer & Chloe's POV, but there'll be Linda's too. 
> 
> The prompt? Right!
> 
> Well… What about you try to guess (as with the tags) for a few chapters? X)

****

**AN OLD FEELING**

1

* * *

  
  


There's no need to open his eyes to understand that he's not where he's supposed to be. Those sorts of things, those fine details, they feel differently. The sight... seeing is just a bonus, a confirmation of what's not supposed to be. 

He isn't supposed to be here.

Lucifer feels it in a very special way. 

It's an old feeling, so old he thought it was new. At first. 

Well... the sensation has no beginning, no end; this is a continuity, a rhythm that has a strong hold on him, that turns from one point to another and starts over again. From the very last cell that composes him to the very last curl of hair. It turns and turns, over and over again. 

A strong, haunting rhythm. 

Each new passage warms his limbs up, makes him forget the pain, and the emptiness that followed it. He is not empty here; this place completes him. This sensation revives his breathing which has stopped, which he has forgotten in the freezing emptiness. He knows he has forgotten important things, he knows he must remember them in order to understand more. 

He isn't supposed to be here; as much for what he's feeling as for what brought him to this place. 

That's all Lucifer knows, all he wants to know. 

The feeling is too much. It looks further, revives that connection, those billions of junctions between him and this place, everything that makes it up. He feels the heat spreading differently than the inferno that usually inhabits him - a different kind of 'usual' -, violent and dangerous fire for another place; this inferno could survive there, lighten the darkness and burn its way through. The present fire is identically fierce. Undoubtedly _more_ fierce, 'no need to pretend otherwise. It is part of a whole, not just of himself, It's part of everything he created for building this place. 

This place...

Can't be. 

There's absolutely no need to open his eyes to see it. 

Lucifer exhales slowly, closing his mind and feels to the sensation, as he feels his wings close around him. 

That's not possible. 

**-xXx-**

That's not possible. 

He can't breathe, yet inhales breathable air - rather pathetically gasps for it. His chest feels like it's on fire, but inside… Bollocks, it feels like he's turning to bloody ice. 

That's not possible. 

"We've got a pulse!"

"Lucifer!"

He doesn't need to open his eyes to understand that something's wrong; he does open them for this voice, what it provokes, what it appeases within him. He opens them because it sounds terrified, because he can't stand the idea of her feeling this way. 

The Detective's eyes are as wide open as his are two narrow cracks of pain and confusion. Her exaggeration for his minimum, this is quite possible… possible that he will shut them soon, possible that all these impossibles will prevail over his desire to keep their gaze as one. 

She squeezes his hand in hers, close hold near her lips. She's shaking, perhaps because he is as well, because this place is as agitated as his thoughts and heart in his burning chest, locked in freezing jail inside. Her eyes wear red marks of tears, it harmonises with all that blood on their joined hands. Her tears harmonise well with the pain running right through him. 

The Detective squeezes his hand harder. "Hold on!" she begs him, moist lips - from tears? Blood? Both? - on his skin. 

That's not possible. 

**Tbc**

* * *


	2. Two opposites

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not quite a week yet, but the first chap was short so... what about a shorter waiting time for the second, hm?

**TWO OPPOSITES**

2

* * *

That's not possible. 

It really isn't, to feel all this. 

Chloe uncrosses her legs, crosses them again; one foot to the floor, the other tapping the air, keeping time of everything she feels. Quick time for apprehension, slower for waiting time, such fucking long waiting time....

The next time, constant, comes from the ground, from the heel that goes up and down, lifts the other leg and jostles her elbow resting on it. 

She moves and shakes, shakes and moves. 

That's how it looks like when you're feeling fear, a feeling impossible to deal with. 

That's not possible.

_He_ is impossible. 

"Stupid Devil…" she mumbles against her fingers.

The ferrous smell of blood tickles her nose every time she breathes in. Then Chloe exhales and passes her fingers on her cheek, on those new tears tickling her skin, helping her tremors. Her hands move from her cheeks to her ears, to her rebellious locks of hair that become accomplices of her tears. 

She looks at the clock. 

That's not possible. 

She can't wait any longer. 

She can't... can't think about what all this time could actually mean. 

So she stands up and taps her fear towards the bright orange semi-circular counter where a young brown woman, very calm for the inherent urgency in her job, welcomes her with a polite smile. "Ma'am?" 

"D-Detective."

The receptionist nods. "Detective. How can I help you?" 

"My partner, he... how long before he—"

"Your partner?" she repeats. 

Chloe takes a deep breath, her hands far enough away from her face so that she only smells disinfectant, the perfume of the woman sitting on the other side of the counter. Her hands lay flat on it as she exhales, slowly. 

"Sorry," she says. "I'm Detective Chloe Decker and... my partner, Lucifer Morningstar, has been brought here after he's b—" She presses her lips together, gulps; not looking once at her hands. "I've been waiting for over three hours a-and…. Is he—?"

She can't.

She can't tell the rest. 

The woman looks at her, especially her hands and top, white skin and cotton lost under all that red. They proposed her to change, clean herself up; when she got here, when she's been stopped outside the operating room. That's not possible, not as long as she remains in this slow uncertainty. 

"I'm sorry, Detective, but if you're not a family member—"

"I am."

Chloe turns around. Amenadiel runs to her and the receptionist. "You are?"

"Amenadiel Morningstar," he informs her. "His older brother." 

That name... It's so odd to use it for anyone else but him, especially now that she knows what it means to him. This name is his possession, the rising star of his hard-earned freedom.

Odd enough for any human who doesn't know - rather 'hasn't found out' something that obvious. Chloe sees herself in the receptionist's skeptical expression as she tries to find plausible 'family relationship' signs between Amenadiel and Lucifer. Plausibly human ones.

They're not.

Everything she'd imagined herself before seeing the obvious….

If this situation had happened two years earlier, she'd have imagined her partner's chances of survival, she'd have imagined a happy ending for all this - even in the horrible eventuality that he—

She wouldn't have imagined him down there, certainly not.

She wouldn't even have thought this as 'real stuff'.

Now….

Now Chloe shivers from head to toe; she can't imagine him trapped down there.. 

She can't imagine alone, sitting on that chair.

Amenadiel gives her a worried glance; for her, for his brother. She would cry to know that she is no longer alone in this nightmare, to know that Lucifer would be if he'd ever…. 

She _is crying_. Again.

That probably explains why he's looking at her this way. It's possible. 

"Mr. Morningstar is still in surgery as we speak. I'm afraid I can't give you any further news at this point," the lady informs them. "The doctor will give you some as soon as he can. In the meantime, I invite you to take a seat in the waiting room."

Her eyes go back to Chloe, all that blood on her. "If you wanna have a drink or... else, there's the cafeteria to the second floor." 

Chloe's answer is immediate. "No."

"If anything happens, we'll warn you by the intercom, don't worry." 

Chloe shakes her head. "I can't. He might... Amenadiel... he might become invulnerable again if I-I…." 

The receptionist is oddly staring at her, but she couldn't care less. There's not much she cares about, except about what might happen to Lucifer if she walks away, if she doesn't. She didn't when... when she should have. 

It's too late now.

It's all her fault. 

She shakes her head a second time. "I can't, Amenadiel." 

He smiles at the woman, puts his arm on Chloe's shoulders and gently pulls her away from the counter, from the growing perplexity of the medical staff, of these men and women who don't know they have the Devil's life in their hands. "Thank you, Miss." 

She lets herself being led to the end of the corridor, struggles for the next step, near the elevator. "I can't go away, not that far. Amenadiel... If he regains his immortality during surgery, if he dies and that I—"

She knows what he did back then, when she was dying in the same hospital. She knows she has to stay close, risk making things worse for him, to give them a chance to save him. He might get stuck down there, in the worst case scenario. Best case scenario... Well, who's to say what would happen if they left those bullets in their place, if his state got worse the moment she comes back? 

No one knows.

No one has ever had such an effect on an immortal.

It's too much uncertainty, far too much.

Especially in his state, especially after she hesitated to walk away when she should have. 

But all that blood... 

He had held her with such strength.

She couldn't bring herself to do it.

Amenadiel reassures her, both hands on her shaky shoulders, as Lucifer did when he—

"I know. Chloe, I know." A slight brush on her arms. "What happened?" 

She inhales, exhales her sobbing explanations. "An ambush. T-too many and…." She breathes in again, rubs her weeping face with her sleeve; still this ferrous smell, stronger on her clothes than on her hands. "The window, it was the only w-w... the only way o-out. He spread his wings a-and... He'd already been shot." 

She can still feel his feathers around her. They hadn't carried them far, but they had protected her until the fall further down. Her fingers are digging into her arms, just as she had forced these feathers into his back before she called for help. 

Maybe she shouldn't have. 

She can't tell, that's the problem!

_This is all your fault._

"It's all my fault," she moans, bowing her head. 

"No, it isn't."

"It is. I should've... I should've left, but... I couldn't. All that blood, he-he was barely breathing even then! W-what were the chances he'd come back from the dead when... when he's not supposed to _die?!_ What the hell was I supposed to do, Amenadiel?!" she exclaims, exhausted, sobbing afterwards; "and now…. Now I can't leave him!""

"You don't have to, Chloe. He's going to be fine." 

Amenadiel's hands are on her shoulders again. He waits for her to lift her head and meet his gaze; strong, immortal. "Lucifer is strong."

But mortal.

Because of her.

**_"We've got a pulse!"_ **

Her heart skips a beat while she remembers his faltering. 

"Yeah?" she whispers, her wide eyes begging the angel not to hide the truth from her. 

Yet she would have preferred not to have known that she's the Devil's weak spot; typical meanness from his Dad, to have created her this way, not to have given them a damn instruction book.

She hates learning by 'experience'. 

She hates making mistakes. 

"Yes." 

She nods. 

She hates this.

On the wall, right to Amenadiel, the clock announces a new time; the fourth. 

That's not possible.

**-xXx-**

Warm rays pass over the world; a long, slow touch of everything they overlook from an immortal position. 

Well... 

Immortal, the star that powers them isn't, not really. Chloe knows that for a fact. 

She might even say they both look alike. 

Ephemeral Lights in the Universe.

Lucifer has already told her for how long this light will last if he wouldn't take care of it himself. Not immortal, just destined to outlast her, Trixie, her daughter's children, her grandchildren.... 

Like him, in a way, way above them all.

It's not so difficult to imagine living with an immortal. It's to imagine the life of an immortal that's difficult, what it might be, to imagine the extinction of all those other ephemeral lives for what he refuses to do, what he pretends he can no longer do. 

What would God say if the Devil stepped - rather flew - in His toes?

It's difficult to see him denying who he is.

It's difficult to see him fall into this other world - cold, bottomless underworld - to save someone else's life, destined to perish. This is a world where the slow heat of this star is long gone.

The sunrays pass, pass Chloe, warming her back. They pass over him without managing to keep this heat under his cold, pale skin. Lucifer is always cold in this kind of situation. The first time she noticed it - without really understanding it, not quite - it was on this roof, after Ma- _Cain_ 's men had fired all their magazines at him. 

The second time was when he came back. 

Chloe smiles unhappily at this memory, a repetition of what he did yesterday. The thought is terrible, perhaps a little comical, to no longer be surprised to see him fall left and right, he, the Devil. It's an expected entry, especially when you fall on Earth - in his penthouse more precisely, covered with blood and glass shards from the broken window - from the depths of Hell. 

The sunbeam leaving her shoulder to get lost in her loose hair, Chloe reaches out for his hand, orangy beam on milky white. 

It's less cold to the touch than the last and second time it happened; which is probably a good sign, a sign that he will wake up soon. She's been repeating herself this for hours, from countless bright orangy beams to the quiet twilight of his almost fall in Hell. Maybe that's why he's less cold to the touch... less time spent - trapped - down there than last time? 

Less time fighting, enduring blows and wounds, costly victories and painful defeats against those demons who called themselves angels, for daring to want another one as king. 

Maybe.

Hell leaves its marks on him, though. Because he's the Devil, because he's not just this biblical bogeyman. She has heard him call himself a 'monster' so many times, every time a terrible thing happens through what he thinks is his fault, even indirectly; but would he really be one that he wouldn't suffer so much every time he went back down there. 

But he'll always reject this possibility, won't he?

Because he's the Devil.

Because he died yesterday, for thirty human seconds, for much longer elsewhere. 

Because he went somewhere else. 

Lucifer's cheek is cold, less cold than his fingers are. He gives her a peaceful expression that she barely accepts, even with this last daylight at the end of the pillow. She can't completely accept it; because she still feels guilty, as responsible for his improving state as for it getting worse. And even for the said improvement, she has done nothing but reluctantly submit to a stubborn demon's brutal orders. 

Maybe Chloe is, too... maybe.

Anyone else but her is the more stubborn.

Maze deserves congratulations, she's the one responsible for this shy heat, not yet quite up to the level of the original one, under her hand - ardent and untenable. 

Chloe, for her part, did nothing. 

She can't do anything, nothing if he dies, nothing if he struggles not to be; it's a very human helplessness. 

But he's better, because the best - this 'nothing' - she could do has been done. 

She rests her hand on his, closes her eyes.

It's always better to wait for a more stable temperature with him in the same room, with his pulse beating under her fingers, if she presses hard enough, that slight movement under his closed eyelids if she looks carefully. 

She would have gone mad waiting at home alone if Amenadiel hadn't called her back in the early afternoon. It's always better to go mad with the main source of her concern right under her nose. 

It's always better to know he's alive.

Chloe isn't surprised to see him showing signs of life once the lightning in the sky and the room has disappeared. 

There's only the Morning Star's submission that can rebel the Prince of Darkness. It doesn't matter if the 'Prince of Evil' denies his celestial origins. His origins always persist to remind him their existence; by this rebellion in this bed, the name he has chosen for himself, for his night club. 

Lucifer remains irresistibly drawn to Light.

It's only natural; darkness attracts light, and vice versa. It's an indivisible notion. Just as rebellion is indivisible to his temper.

Chloe is quiet when he grunts, she freezes on her seat when he moves in the bed, holds her breath when he inhales, then coughs and grunts again. She's his opposite, human, mortal... his mortality, his nemesis of sorts. How could she not be, being the reason why he always goes back down there? For not going there herself after her death? Hell for the Devil, for the miracle that she is. 

Lucifer has explained her this notion of guilt, but Chloe suspects that her 'situation' might falsify the end result. She's guilty, a miracle as well. 

Two opposites. 

As one, she has no rights to express her relief now; all the more so if this situation is her making. 

She should leave, let him recover completely. 

He's fine, he's waking up...

She can go.

She can't. 

Chloe becomes his other half again; she breathes, moves and finds her voice back - she finds everything back the moment his gaze finds her. "Lucifer...."

He smiles at her, she smiles at him too, can no longer resist the need to touch him. His lips respond to hers, alive but still far from his usual ardor - although they easily discharge Chloe from her distress, from these salty pearls between two kisses. 

It's gonna be fine.

She wants to apologize, to ask for his forgiveness for not having reacted as she should have, when she should have. She really wants to. But other words come out of her lips, passing a third kiss, passing another tear and her hand on his cheek. "You... you promised me you'd never go back there again." 

Lucifer sighs. Chloe is so relieved to feel this slight brush from his fingers on her forearm that she nearly bursts into tears, louder and more ridiculous ones than these discreet tears running on her cheeks, touching Lucifer's. 

With her forehead against his, she bites her lip so as not to succumb. She buries her fingers in his hair as his thumb gently brushes her palm.

Alive. 

"I...k'pt...i-it."

"You died!" 

His lips touch hers, he's the one asking for another kiss, another tear. "I 'did', De'ctive…" he whispers. "N't a… big d-deal, is 't?" 

"We made one, Lucifer. It's a big one for me."

Chloe moves away, long enough to see him staring at her, his mouth opened on a protest, or frustration of no longer having access to hers; too long to see the bandages under his hospital gown, the drip needle in his hand, these shadows under his eyes, not fully awake yet, lost... tired by this near-death experience, the very present pain.

By her presence. 

"I can't…." She's shaking her head. "I don't want to imagine you there anymore."

"And you won't have to," he replies, convinced that he can 'convince' her that there's nothing to worry about.

Chloe plays with his fingers. He lets her do so - he's too exhausted to fight it, to convince her that he's not. His eyes are already starting to close, his hand is reacting less and less to hers, a desperate player on this fragile thread of life resounding above his head. She'd have imagined another sound for the Devil's life, maybe something 'wilder'. This one is slow, like his breathing, like the submission of his gaze to his eyelids, this play on the lifeline, in the palm of her hand.

"I will if you won't stop dicing with death in the field," she sighs, convinced that he's too far away - never far enough from Hell - to hear her. 

But he smiles. " 'm not a 'paperwork' Devil, Detec've."

He's impossible. 

  
  
**Tbc**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you in a week or so :)  
> 'Hope you liked this chapter.


	3. Light & Warmth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments, hits & kudos for the first two chapters.  
> Still not guessing the prompt? X)

**LIGHT & WARMTH**

3

* * *

He inhales.

Light.

Warmth.

He exhales.

Light again. And warmth again. 

That old feeling again.

The feeling that there's no earthly boundaries, no change. Change... doesn't exist. Not here, not between every inhalation, exhalation. 

Change, boundaries; these are human notions, absolutes of Hell. 

Change.

You don't change what is already perfect, what has always been perfect. 

But he is not. That is the very reason why he—

Light and warmth enter into him with another breath. It is good, perfect. It's not. Not possible. 

Yet these sensations, his body, his mind... they become one. As one. Perfect, absolute, ethereal unit. No boundaries, not even with his own body, his own perception. 

He's aware of more, more than before. Like before. Awareness of others, not like in Hell where awareness remains pain, guilt and feigned repentance for the failure of the two previously mentioned torments. 

Down there.... This is parasitic awareness _down there._

A different sort here, familiar awareness of these 'others'. 

Which hasn't changed.

He has. 

Maybe that's why he can't hear them yet, not distinctly, but if he is right about where he thinks he is—

But that's not possible.

Why?

Why now?

He doesn't hear them, but nevertheless feels their presence between each new thought that still remains his only property, only because he desires it so. 

Hell is guilt. 

Hell thrives on it, materializes through its influence, its nuances.

It is a matter of will, here. 

What he desires, he will get it. 

He remembers; he desired so many things back then. Everything, everything he didn't have.

What he desires.... 

Why is he even _here?_

He feels the answer in his mind, if he wants to... he might know, if he really wants to. He could hear the others, talk to them, see them. 

See.

He sees the ethereal sensations become walls, floor, high ceiling and closed door. He sees his body; his hands, his legs, everything that is him, coming back to what he knows, to what he has gotten used to - the materialization of his independence, his freedom. He sees the bed that welcomes his body, this bedroom - _his_ bedroom. 

He sees because he wants to. 

Because he can. 

"What the f—?!"

He hears his voice, for the same reason. 

Light and warmth.

That's not possible. 

Lucifer sits up, sees, hears and feels, more than he can understand. He runs his hands over his shirt, strangely earth-looking for such a place. 

This is real.

Really absurd.

"Unbelievable…" he gasps as he looks around. 

His gaze - desired and really perfect, as before - stops at the door, desired closed. Fervently desired closed when he feels this presence just behind. 

Light and warmth.

Absolutely perfect. 

_That's not possible._

**-xXx-**

_One, two, three, four..._

This can't be happening. 

_… eight, nine, ten, eleven...._

No way, not again. 

_… fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen...._

It's too much, too much time without him. It's not enough time for him to come back yet. 

Ten more to go. 

Ten more and then—

Then she could get him out of there. 

Then she could yell at him how stupid he'd been not to wait for her, to think that she would quietly sit at her desk, that she wouldn't know where to find him. 

_… twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty._

His mouth is cold. Chloe almost digs her nails under his chin, her fingers are shaking - cold, afraid, pinching his nose so hard that he should complain. 

He should.

She doesn't like kissing him like that, she doesn't like any of this. 

Especially not feeling anything against her lips. 

No breathing, no warmth, insults for how she treats his chin, his soaked clothes, soiled with mud. 

"Come back... C-Come back!"

_One, two, three, four…._

She doesn't want to go to thirty again, nor kissing him like that. 

_… seven, eight, nine...._

Chloe presses, clenches her teeth as she feels a cramp rising from her arms, when her palm slips over Lucifer's shirt; far from his heart, his lungs, from this water that doesn't leave him, that doesn't want to. 

Chloe won't leave him.

Death wouldn't leave him if she did; she only has power over his life. That's what she has to bring back, bring back the life, drowned by the death he's not supposed to 'live'. 

Nor was he supposed to come here _alone!_

They're partners, they—

He can't leave. 

He should... he should _react._ Lucifer's not like her, not like anyone else on Earth. He's everything, everything to her. He should be tougher than that, as the Devil, as an angel - he can come back. 

He _must_ come back. 

_… eleven, twelve, thirteen...._

Chloe's hands are sprayed with cold water, her hearing relieved by other sounds than hers. She jumps as strongly as Lucifer who throws water and bile up on his shirt and his partner's hands. 

"Lucifer! Thank G—!" 

Holding back a sob, Chloe helps him expel what's left of this 'death' by pulling him by the arm until his chest touches her knees. Shudder after shudder, she feels him coming back to life. She rubs his back, his arm and his hand grasping her blouse; then his neck, his hair, one soaked curl after another. "It's okay, Lucifer. Y-you're here, with me. You're here...."

Lucifer breathes in, almost chokes, almost throws up again. He breathes in like it's the last one. But another breath comes, then another... until a more or less steady breath, less likely to be accompanied by bile and hoarse signs of him getting back to life. 

"B'oo'y… d-disgus'ng..." he groans in her arms.

His teeth chatter a pathetic melody to which she gives rhythm with a caress or two along his ruined suit jacket. One more. 

The last one. 

She hopes it's the last one. 

She's laughing, trembling as well. "T-That's for n-nearly been drowned!" 

From her giggle comes a series of endless nervous laugh; she feels relieved, exhausted, drained afterwards by this surge of adrenaline, from the bottom of the lake to the muddy banks of the park. Amused, too.

Gosh… there's only Lucifer who can 'die' unlike popular belief, just to have the last word, even in death. There's only Lucifer to choose water over fire.

Only him to come back, to complain the next second.

He's the only one who will make her laugh when all she wants to do is crying.

**-xXx-**

Chloe's frozen to the bone. 

The shoes they gave her are twice her usual size. She feels like she's seven again, when she was dressing with her mother's outfits and pretending to be a star for a few minutes. She is - sort of -, for all those people around her, who make sure she feels good, as well as having her side of the story. 

From a factual point of view, it's hard to believe that she has been able to dislodge her partner from the front part of the submerged vehicle, that she managed to pull him to the bank, no matter the distance between the two and the weight of an unconscious man - almost drowned for good - in her arms. 

From an emotional point of view, it's a bit more likely.

Fear, resolve, anger, love... it's making small chances bigger. 

She's small, under that thick blanket, with her toes free to flex and rub the sole of those giant boots. 

But she's still cold.

Streams of freezing water cut off her blood flow, slow her heartbeats and soften her confident intonation every time she looks to her right. 

Every time Lucifer doesn't look at her. 

He's not looking anything special, so... She shouldn't feel more upset than anyone else here.

Still; it's bloodcurdling.

Not from fear, neither hatred nor rancor; no, only from deep concern. 

He doesn't look at anyone, never for very long. He doesn't talk much, even less since the paramedics finished with him, satisfied with his breathing, his temperature within normal limits and his regular shaking, signs of defeated hypothermia. His lips have even gotten back to their usual hue, a thin line of pink that still doesn't smile. 

That haven't smiled since a while.

Not even to get rid of all this 'unnecessary' excess of medical attention, as he would say. If he'd talk. 

That's odd. Bloodcurdling.

He never stays quiet for very long. Actually, he's close to break his personal record. That's enough to worry Chloe more than usual, more than in any other situation.

Shit... Lucifer puts himself in danger so frequently that it sounds like a habit to her, their daily routine. She'd have a strong preference for their fight at the supermarket. That and their reconciliation - when morning comes, parental break, tidying up her house... it's a question of opportunity, isn't it? On the pillow, in the shower, on the couch, the— 

All of this... all of this is preferable to his ordinary imprudence in the field. 

Chloe watches him mechanically searching something in his pants pockets, running his hands over his sweater, a series of thoughtless gestures without him noticing once that he has changed his clothes the previous half hour. 

More than odd.

She hands him a steaming cup the next minute, rid of the same medical attention. "Drink this."

Lucifer hasn't seen her approach him, she gets that when he is startled by her voice. She suspects how much this 'ordinary' situation is unique the second he lays eyes on her, when his confusion turns to excessive suspicion. 

It's just her, just hot tea with excessive doses of sugar.

She knows he likes it this way, for want of the deciliter of alcohol poured between each sip. She knows this kind of look isn't for her, neither for what she's offering him. This isn't a look for Earth, in general. 

Chloe comes closer to the ambulance, to him, until she hides his gaze from others. 

She also knows that drawing everyone's attention back on them isn't what he needs right now.

She knows she has nothing to fear from such a look.

So Chloe moves the cup towards his shaking hands, visible under the brown blanket, the same hue coming back into his eyes. "It'll warm you up."

Lucifer lifts an eyebrow, the last crimson gleam fades under his curls that tease his forehead and smell like the lake. In other circumstances, Chloe would find him cute. 

In other circumstances….

His disturbing apathy turns to a disappointed grimace as soon as his lips taste the offered drink. He frowns, finally comes back to his ordinary devilish-self, which has been lost in the water of Echo Park Lake so far. 

Past the first sip, Lucifer purses his lips and closes his eyes, the time of a stronger tremor - probably because he's still far from his usual dynamism. After this discomfort, he opens them on the cup and inspects its contents, annoyed with what he sees and tastes. "Not exactly the beverage I was seeking for."

"What were you seeking for?"

"My flask." 

"You know that's not what I'm talking about," she says, now leaning against the open door of the vehicle. 

"What I do know, Detective, is that my Scotch is missing a great opportunity to turn this concoction into tolerable coffee." 

More words and smiles than the hour before, too many to make it sound 'real'. The Devil never lies, he just sidestepping her questions, _honestly_ manipulative through joyfull replies. He doesn't want to talk about it, shows resistance. But Chloe makes him vulnerable, she can lower his defenses - that's what he's trying to avoid, she gets it.

And, in other circumstances, she'd respect his boundaries.

She would, if she wasn't herself close to critical hypothermia before his apathetic expression, his feigned joy in order to pretend to feel a certain warmth.

"Lucifer... what the hell were you thinking? I mean… Go catching the suspect without me, really?"

Not that they can call such reckless behavior as a proper arrest... 

Chloe shakes her head while she thinks over their guy who had surfaced from freezing waters the moment she had plunged into the lake herself. He hadn't even tried to go after her. 

What would have been the point?

She and Lucifer had given him a golden opportunity to vanish into thin air. 

How is she going to explain this to the Lieutenant?

Chloe sighs as Lucifer pulls the blanket up on his still shaky shoulder with his free hand, his fingers holding it at chest height. All this without looking at her.. 

Maybe because he knows he's screwed up or because he's still stuck in this odd apathy?

"You weren't far," he says. 

"Right," she mutters unhappily, shaking her head, her wet hair tickling her cheeks and neck. 

Jesus... she can't tell which one of them is the most 'muddy'. If she really has to guess, her vote would go to Lucifer; he's been stuck in that car longer than she has, busy getting him out. 

"I wasn't far," Chloe continues. "Just at the other end of the lake." She squeezes her own blanket with one hand, almost crushing her overflowing cup of tepid tea with the other. "Did you just think once of what might have happened if I had been too far to fish you out?!"

"I did think of it, Detective. A lot. And I came to realize that I'd have come out of this incident unscathed. We wouldn't even talk about it, would we?" 

Chloe takes a step back. She feels the tea soaking the blanket at chest height, damp warmth barely dislodging the block of ice that's falling into her stomach. 

He's just... he's blaming her, just like that? Without even looking at her, while he keeps testing the solidity of the cup in his hands, frowning, looking annoyingly at the sugary drink inside?

Blaming her for this.... 

She can't even blame him, not completely, not for that.

It's true.

There's so much to think without her in the equation, without that untimely vulnerability, always tempted to appear at the worst possible time. He risks so much by staying with her, more than she ever will.

Lucifer overestimates her soul, anyway.

Chloe's got a lot of guilt to deal with.

She feels guilty right now. It hits her like a bucket of water, right in the face, facing his puzzled expression. Puzzled, he is more so the next second, according to Chloe's expression - stunned, so 'guilty'. 

"Detective?" 

He's the one who looks worried now. 

This is ridiculous.

It's Lucifer who didn't tell her his plans - as if he ever had one! _"Hello, murderer!"_ \- That wasn't a plan! Lucifer who had risked his life on the absurd presumption that she wouldn't come after him, Lucifer who worries about her state when he has just blamed her for his.

This is ridiculously ordinary.

And as usual, Chloe can't let it go.

She takes a deep breath, avoiding his gaze. "As responsible as I can be for your state, Lucifer, you're the one who seeks for it. If you wanted to avoid this, well... maybe you should think of a career move, hm?"

He's staring at her, surprised. "Wh-what on earth are you talking about, Chloe?" 

He looks so confused by her fiery - frozen from the inside - reply, she's starting to wonder if she really heard his. Does she feel that guilty that she has imagined all this?

"About what you just told me, that this whole situation is my fault, which is true. in a way… given the fact that I make you mortal, vulnerable and all that...." she recites, upset. 

It's the first time he's ever complained about it. 

_"And I'll do it again. And again. Don't you know that, Detective?"_

Before that, before he left, he didn't care, all he cared about was protecting her, no matter the cost. 

This long year without him, this whole new year with him, its highs and lows driven by such a long time in Hell. 

And then he died once.

He did die today.

Two 'nearly' death experiences in one year; this is a lot, even for the Devil. 

It was a lot of time trapped in Hell when he'd promised he'd never set foot there again until their lives together comes to an end. Back there, he would have plenty of time to mourn when Chloe's mortal life would have stopped and that she'd have started the eternity of another; without him. 

But without her….

Without her, he'd never have had to suffer those sporadic travels. 

She makes the situation all much harder for him, makes Hell harder - in general, for the future. Because she makes him vulnerable, because he hadn't had to deal with these consequences down there at first, not until Charlie's abduction. 

It was through her that the demons had noticed his weakness, for her that he had confronted them. 

What was an earthly vulnerability against an infernal multitude?

What was a mortal woman's love against an angel's immortal despair?

She's just a thorn in Lucifer's side. Small, annoying thorn. 

Chloe's aware of that, he is as well. 

Paying no heed to these details seems no longer enough to enjoy their time together on Earth. For one of them, at least. 

"Right," Lucifer reacts at last, Chloe suddenly fascinated by her shoes, the stream of tears that might fall on them. "This is your fault, in a way... a 'fashion' way."

She lifts her head, meets his gaze; amused, annoyed afterwards - for the clothes he's wearing, the ones lying in a muddy ball inside the ambulance. 

He sighs. "I know we haven't had our fun in one of these ambulances yet, but… ruining another of my suits for this purpose seems a bit too much of roleplay, don't you think?"

Chloe laughs first, then she bites her lip, feeling ashamed, guilty; a little less than before and not for the same reasons, but the idea is the same. It's ridiculous from her to think that he would blame her for this 'flaw' now, after all this time and everything they faced together.

Each giggle helps to melt this block of ice, as does Lucifer's smile. His smile always helps in many things, like denying her fears for the future, about what's unpredictable in this sort of relationship. It's rather about what's 'predictable', to be honest....

There is no room for unpredictable stuff in God's miracle life, for His Rebellious Son.

There's no room for guilt when everything is planned in advance. 

Lucifer will never blame her. Never directly. 

"Meeting our guy alone and send his car to the bottom of the lake seems a bit too much of risks, don't you think?" she replies with a smile.

Lucifer's smile turns to an inappropriate invitation. It would only take an ambulance door to turn this into something 'appropriate', though. She looks at the curls on his forehead, their curved ends teasing the corner of his eyes, his hands turning the empty cup, slowly kneading it. 

"He had serious difficulties to properly maneuver his gear stick. I did my best to show him, but…."

"I better drive us back home, then."

"It's for the best, indeed. I'm afraid that my personal stick is hardly maneuverable at the moment!" he exclaims, shivering under his blanket, his seductive expression engulfed by his shown vulnerability. 

That's all right. As the Devil's partner, Chloe could seduce for two. It's still a long way from his 'biblical' experience, but she learned enough to arouse him once the words came out of her mouth. "I read somewhere that it needs firm grip."

He looks pleased. "My my, Detective! You'll have to share your reading with your partner." 

She squints. "You hate paperwork."

"As much as freezing stick and balls, but if one inconvenience can stop others...." 

She can see some particularly indecent thoughts crossing his mind, the way he cocks his head, how his eyes slightly widen and the simple, subtle smile that rises, rises, rises....

"Well, isn't' that another roleplay we could share later?"

Chloe shakes her head and puts her hand on his. "I also read somewhere that you should avoid vivid moves in case of hypothermia. Thus, you avoid overheating."

His smile widens. "It's little risk for the Devil, won't you agree?"

"Sure, as much as shivering under a thick heating blanket," Chloe replies, upon which the Devil can hardly hold back another shiver.

"Right," he mumbles. "What can I say? I'm full of surprises!"

Chloe smiles and approaches him, subduing the next shiver with a kiss on the cheek; still cold, not as cold as when he'd been shot or had come back from Hell, but enough to make her shiver in turn. He has closed his eyes when her lips have touched him, only opening them when she moves away.

"Save the best ones for when we get back home, okay?" 

He looks at her lips, lets his answer with a smile before words. "No promises."

Amused, reassured by all the teasing, the tenderness that warms up his apathetic expression from the previous half hour; Chloe squeezes his hand, then walks away to get the authorization to go home from the doctors and her colleagues who are busy coordinating to get the murderer's car out of the lake. She can already see the rear bumper emerging and shivers as much as Lucifer under the blanket slipping from her shoulders.

It's a bloodcurdling vision, to see what might have happened to him if she hadn't swum so fast, if she'd been too slow to bring him back to the nearest bank, to that spark of life that he had been testing a little too often lately.

It is even more terrible when she turns around, seeing this odd expression coming back on his face. 

**Tbc**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll reveal the prompt in the notes of the next chapter (coming next week if I write/translate as planned)  
> I also changed the chapters count (I still must written 3 chapters, but now I'm sure it'll be 7 - not more). 
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	4. Odd oddity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll reveal the prompt at the end of the chap!

**ODD ODDITY**

4

* * *

  
  


Emotions… emotions are hard.

But it's nothing compared to emotional distress, even if one difficulty frequently leads to another. Even if emotional distress is primarily a matter of _emotions._

First and foremost, it's hard to recognize.

It can be expressed in a radically different way from one person to another; that's the heart of the problem. 

Some people will make the first step easier than it actually is; through raw, unfiltered expression. Cries, sobs _will express_ instead of usually coherent speech and, in the end, they'll only be some 'noisy' search of validity about what they feel from whoever listens.

Others will characterize the real challenge of this very first step. These are people who usually feel less comfortable with emotions. These ones will act as if nothing had happened; excessively. If it's about sadness considered too much embarrassing, they will overflow with joy and laugh heartily. If it's about hardly controllable rage, they'll pretend to be calm, will try to calm others, to appease them about minor vexations - all this to appease theirs, although incomparable.

It's essential to define this before anything else. 

Raw expression... or disguised one?

After that, it is possible - simpler - to define the nature of their distress, its source. 

This analytical, therapeutic procedure is meant to be effective, it has proven its efficiency on many patients. 

But what is a first step, what is the behavioral differentiation for the Devil himself, who's inherently a behavioral differentiation?

Lucifer is a symbiosis of expression and denial, it's a fact. 

Would she like it that Linda wouldn't be able to catalogue him as the rest of her patients. 

But she had been as effective with him as she had hoped to be like with any other 'human' people. Through sessions, misinterpretations and shocking revelations about his life, Linda can boast of having understood most of the Devil's behaviors, as other supernatural beings in the process. 

She could never put this on her curriculum, but...

Still, it does feel good to hear it, to think over all these complicated steps that have led up to this very moment. 

There had been the time when Lucifer had expressed anxiety of no longer be appealing - even on sexual level - by barging in her office to offer his services after complaining about Chloe's cold reaction. 

Expression and evasive tactics, two in one.

Or that other time, when he had asked her to 'fix' Chloe, the day he felt 'messed-up' from the inside himself, with all these emotions he failed to understand. 

Uriel's death had been a turning point in their relationship, both for discovering his true identity - which he had always shouted loud and clear to everyone around - and the intense emotional distress that this tragedy had caused him. Lucifer may well be the torturer of any guilty souls from Earth, he nevertheless had very hard time to deal with his own; to the point that he had missed several sessions. At first, he had rebuffed Linda, because he wanted her acting the same with him, to reassure him that his relationship with others hadn't changed, that he was just as hateful as before, no more so for killing his brother too. 

He wanted her to prove him that he was no more 'monstrous' than he had been before that night.

All this to get rid of the guilt, feed the monster behind the mask of human flesh he was wearing. Sidesteps, over and over again.... 

Then he had shown her, had been 'completely honest' - his devilish, raw expression of how he was feeling. 

They'd been through a lot, she and he - from therapist to extraordinary patient, with incredible behavioral differentiation and yet... as human as anyone else in his way to deal with his emotions.

At least the most recent ones no longer included indecent proposals or intense belligerency. She hadn't risked much with him coming around with multitude of toys for Charlie, only to show her - and to reassure himself - that he had come back, that his presence was essential for each one of them again, and that was determined to remain so, as much as to stay on Earth for good. 

This one hadn't overly worried her.

She'd directly understood what it was all about, knew what had caused this and how to appease him as much as possible, he even probably listened to her.

"I think my Father's going soft in the head." 

This one is... unexpected. Odd. 

Worrying.

Linda takes the time to observe Lucifer's posture, a tense one, close to the door through which he has just stormed inside her office without worrying about the hour or the slightest possibility that she might already have been busy with another patient, systematically less needy of advice than he is, _according to him_. Apart from this odd preamble and his urgent tone, nothing else in his appearance gives her a clear lead to explore right away. 

Back in trouble.

That fast.... 

What's even more troubling is the 'Father' topic, so meticulously avoided by Lucifer most of the time. 

He hadn't really talked about Him since... well, before he went back to Hell. 

This alone pushes on the therapist's panic button who puts her file on the corner of her desk, turning to her patient. Something tells her she'd better cancel her next appointment.

"All right, I'll bite. What makes you think He is?"

As Lucifer takes place on the couch - unsinkable ship of the worst emotional distress and tricky subjects - Linda uses that time to observe him more closely. She soon notices his drawn features, his pallid complexion getting worse under the lights hanging on the walls. No matter how much eyeliner he used before coming here, it's not helping him looking better. On the contrary, the dark circles under his eyes look darker, to the point of seriously questioning his usually indisputable, perfect features.

'Makes it look like he hasn't slept in days. 

Which, on second thoughts, could be the case. 

His restlessness alone can't explain these small imperfections in his outfit. 

Linda's gaze travels from his face to his suit. 

He rarely wears such distinct, although primary, hues. 

White shirt with black suit jacket and pants.

This is a rare appearance, indeed - especially since he's back, since he made his relationship with Chloe official. It's a clear-cut vision of his identity; the past light of his soul possessed by darkness from his divine judgment. The Devil trying to distance himself from the angel he once was. 

A brutal dividing line.

Recently, Lucifer has been wearing only shades of blue, purple, sometimes more pinkish shades with dark blue suit jacket. 

The Devil is getting in love, getting new shades for it. 

It's a different one today.

Frowning about what her discreet, disturbing analysis might mean, Linda takes place in her seat. She patiently waits for him to speak again, waiting for him to find the best way to express what's troubling him, either head-on or with his own digressions. Whatever it is, he tries to find it between the wrinkled folds of his sleeve. 

One more trembling tug on his cufflink, the only clear silvery trace on this identity dividing line, and it'd fall on the floor. 

"I guess it's to be expected... He is way over the hill, which is a bloody understatement on universal scale!" 

"I guess it is," Linda says cautiously. "But we never really think of God as a young, robust figure, do we?"

"No, an African-American octogenarian profusely rewarded for his acting is much more representative, isn't he?"

Linda squints. "Does Morgan Freeman have something to do with your Father's possible senile dementia?"

"Not 'possible', Doctor; He is senile."

"You _think_ He is, that's what you said when you came in."

Lucifer's fingers stop playing with his cufflink close to fall for his ring, twisting it several times, not looking once at her. 

"He is," he whispers. "He has to be."

"Why is that?"

"I died."

Linda's eyes go round as her mouth opens with stupefaction, unable to find words to express it. She wasn't expecting this. Her stunned rounded lips come to a quieter expression, a forced smile that could turn into a grimace by just breathing in. 

"Again?!" she exclaims, neither smiling nor grimacing. 

Lucifer sits up, presses his back against the couch and exclaims in turn - unable to control his facial expression as well, "Exactly! Why this all new death would change anything for Him? And what about the previous one, mh? It was just a shooting, just some drug traffickers who - let me remind you - were using this abandoned factory illegally without thinking once about air vent fitting to drug fabrication! Bloody amateurs... Had they ever watched 'Breaking Bad'?"

Right. This happened a few months ago. 

Linda remembers having a hard time calming Chloe down and stopping her from rushing to the hospital while he was recovering from the surgery. Maze's _brutal_ help did help her a lot. 

What is 'a lot' right now are these repeated deaths. 

"And this all new death? When did—?" she asks him.

"Last week, an idiot panicked when he saw the Detective getting out of her car. 'Thought crashing his car into a lake would help him escape justice." 

"But how—?"

Lucifer shrugs. "I was in the car. Diving, my face unexpectedly met the windscreen, cold water, _yada yada yada!_ It's not the most important thing here, Doctor." 

"It might be. 'Might explain what you've been through."

"You're not going through anything special with death."

"Said the Devil, Ruler of Hell, former angel in the Silver City?" she replies with a smile. 

The aforesaid Devil cocks his head to the side, folding his hands in his lap. He rephrases, "Nothing special for someone as special than me, at least." 

"Wanna talk about it? To someone less special than you?" she offers him. 

He clears his throat, then sighs, looking towards the window. Linda, for her part, looks at his folded hands, almost welded together to hide his tremors from her. "Not particularly." 

Not right away. 

It's too early to get to the root of the problem. 

She gets the message and lets this 'death point' aside for something else. "What do you want?"

Desire has always been the best approach in his case. 

"I want all this to stop."

Concise. 

He comes to confide in her, without digressions. 

"It's hard to put an end to something like death, Lucifer." 

He smiles, but she can tell it's not a breezy, nor provocative one. That's a different kind of smile. 

"Not for the Devil." 

Linda nods, waits a few seconds before saying what they both know. "But in your case, that would mean not seeing Chloe anymore. Saying goodbye for good. Is that what you want?"

He lets out a mocking exclamation, his gaze once more attracted to the window; real representation of a desired escape. But he hasn't left that couch yet. "I want nothing of the sort. Even though Chloe thinks the opposite." 

Linda frowns. "Why?"

"She thinks I blame her for my mortality, especially since I came back from Hell. It's bloody ridiculous." 

"Maybe not," Linda intervenes with a slight shrug. "You died, didn't you? Twice. And your Father, who's possibly 'going soft in the head', is The One who puts her into this world. That's enough to fear fair reproaches from you. It would be for anyone."

"But she's not like 'anyone', Doctor," Lucifer growls. 

She smiles; not worried by his tone or his hands that have become fists on his lap. "I know. And these deaths weren't like any others, were they?" 

More than an observation, Linda raises a question - the same one that has been spinning back and forth from one to the other since the beginning of this unscheduled session, a question raised by her arched eyebrow. 

What makes them different from the others?

Lucifer doesn't say anything at first. He moves to the edge of the couch and pours himself a glass of water, speaking only once it's close to overflow. Linda can't help but makes a parallel with this drowning and her patient's more tragic one last week.

"No." 

"What was so special about them?" 

"I told you, nothing. Heart and respiratory failure, resurrection... that's nothing new," he tells her before drinking half of the glass.

"There's got to be some detail, something that makes you doubt about God's mental health," she insists. 

"I don't need anything to doubt, I always have."

"Lucifer, what happened when you died those two times?" 

It's the right time. The best one she'll ever get. 

The moment he puts his glass down, when he sits up and cannot avoid her gaze before trying to melt in the backrest of the couch, when she leans forward, says his name, entangling him once more into her therapeutic nets. 

When he gulps and stops twisting his ring on his finger.

This moment….

The moment of truth. The second step.

The root of the problem.

"I woke up in my bedroom." 

His fingers are shaking.

"My old bedroom."

**-xXx-**

There's something wrong.

Many things seem wrong since Chloe's been put in the know, but she starts to see the difference between things that are only odd for her human perception and those that would be odd both for her and Lucifer. 

Lucifer....

Something's wrong with him. 

He can't hide it from her, because he doesn't understand it himself. 

Chloe knows; she knows how he is. She learned to recognize a few signs, at least. They've only been together for a year, after all, and there are still odd things about him, 'humanly' odd. There was the time when... well, their _first time_. This very first time; beautiful, arousing, long awaited, waking up then in each other's arms. That morning, Chloe had learned the hard way that angel wings weren't just 'cute', but also ticklish muscles waking up others if you pressed on a particular spot near the shoulder blades. 

She runs her fingers over her chin, where the pain from Lucifer's reflex punch is just a bad memory now, an odd thing she has learned to deal with. 

She runs her fingers over it, folds them into a fist to support the weight of her thoughts. She thinks about his wings.

They prove that something's wrong - that and other things -, because they're _gone._

Chloe hasn't seen them in almost a week, mostly because Lucifer managed to get out of bed before her. The other times, even dozing in the crumpled sheets after funny distractions, he's never been relaxed enough to let them out. 

She misses this; the feathers touch on her arms, completely covering their entwined bodies. Waking up in his arms misses her too much often these days, it's too much complicated to understand what's going on with him; even with the cup he offers her, just after having hugged, kissed and talked to him. "Troubles to sleep?" 

He sighs, presses his chin on the top of her head and always answers the same thing. "More like troubles with illogicalness."

And always pulling the rug out from under her next attempt. "What about you, love? Sleep well?

The answer is yes, always yes. She always sleeps better than he does. It's easy to do better.

He doesn't sleep anymore, or barely - another one of those odd things. 

And Chloe's also been sleeping less, feeling his body against hers is happening less so. At bedtime as the following morning. Feeling _him_ less with her. 

Lucifer likes darkness, never pretends to submit to it at the same time than hers, but he likes to stay with her until she falls asleep, he likes her company and their night-time talks... when they talk. That's why she's more used to wake up before him and not the other way around, like lately. 

Being such a nocturnal creature has consequences when you share your life with the only person capable of making you mortal and, therefore, sensitive to undesirable effects of sleepless nights. 

Chloe has initially thought that she was responsible for his increased exhaustion, that he needed some time alone to rest. 

That was three days ago, three days that she's been sleeping at her place instead of his, even though Trixie was at Dan's for the rest of the week. 

Three days. Three nights. 

Three insomnia.

Every morning, for each time they met at the precinct, every conversation at work and in private, Lucifer's strange behavior hadn't stopped. He kept joking, bringing her the same coffee that he always puts on the corner of her desk, next to her pile of files to fill for the day; yet, something was wrong, every single time. 

Details. 

He was joking, but his tone wasn't that joyful, not like usual. It sounded monotonous, too joyful or not enough. 

His gentle offer of coffee has turned into nervous gesture with each new morning. He'd almost knocked files on the floor yesterday, then her coffee when he has tried to catch them with supernatural, yet clumsy, exceptional speed.

So is his restlessness; undoubtedly exceptional.

Not to mention the aforesaid files - exceptional turn in Lucifer's exceptional behavior. 

Since when did he prefer boring paperwork to 'real' investigation? 

Chloe had almost spat out her coffee when she'd seen him open a file this morning and didn't take his eyes off it until he left for Linda's office.

It's been the detail that cried out loud obvious oddity.

Proof that he was hiding something serious from her. 

She had questioned him, of course. She hadn't expected real answer, no matter how honest he claims to be in general. 

"Who are you and what have you done to Lucifer Morningstar?" she joked, a smile on her face while she just wanted to cry.

She almost did when she'd seen his expression tense - preoccupied, at first -, his gaze turning red for a second and his fingers slightly shaking on the file. 

"I wish I knew," he had whispered.

Then, without warning, without giving her time to react, a chance to understand, Lucifer had gotten up, pretexting an appointment with Linda that he couldn't postpone, and had put the file back on her desk.

He hadn't looked once at her.

Chloe closes hers and checks her watch. Linda's probably still helping him getting this odd thing out, _really_ serious wrong thing for three hours of talk. Or Lucifer's probably driving her nuts, not knowing what's really bothering him. 

It's bothering her. It really does.

Is it because of her, what he's been going through lately? Come to think of it, Lucifer hadn't really acted strangely until after he'd almost drown himself. At least once a day since then, she keeps seeing this expression on his face; strange, _really_ strange. 

Have his last... 'trips' to Hell been so-so... hellish to require such a long session with his therapist? Did it affect him that much? It didn't seem so when he came back. Sick, clumsy, aggressive, on edge - he surely had been; that's what you can expect from a whole decade of fighting demons, torturing guilty souls and his own mind by thinking about her, about them. 

That's not what she's been seeing lately. 

It's something else.

Something different. 

Chloe's slightly startled when she hears her phone ring. The third one helps her pass her surprise - undesirable effect of such a deep reflection about supernatural beings' common oddity - and take the call. "Decker."

"Chloe, hi. It's Linda." 

Chloe smiles. "Hi. Let me guess…" she continues, already rolling her eyes. "Lucifer's got more pressing things to do than coming help me with paperwork, mh? And here I thought I cured him of his chronic revulsion!"

A long silence follows her words. 

"He's not with you?" Linda finally asks, a hardly audible murmur with the noise around.

Chloe frowns. 

"I know he's fast, but give him time to leave your office. You just finished the session, right?"

"I— No." 

"No?"

"No, I—" Linda sighs at the other end of the line. "Our session didn't end as... as I expected to, actually. When he left, he... he was upset, Chloe. I've had to take care of other patients ever since, and he hasn't returned any of my calls, so... I'm calling you now." 

Another sigh. 

"I thought he'd be with you," she explains herself. 

"And I thought he was with you," Chloe says.

She hates how her voice shakes on the last syllable, how she loudly exhales, louder than her usual calm breathing. She hates not to be; calm. She hates that Linda isn't either, that she doesn't urge her to be the next second. 

She hears Linda walking into her office as she leaves hers, pushing her seat to the side and gathering her things. 

She's got a bad feeling about this. 

"You said 'upset'... how much upset, Linda?" 

Her silence is answering her plenty. 

A terrible feeling. 

It's as terrible as she feared once she has passed the elevator doors, past her first step out of it and the first syllable of Lucifer's name strangled by the ensuing cry of fear when she sees him; his face - previously haunted by a strange expression - haunted this time by painful, barbaric expression of the blood staining the floor beneath him. 

_"LUCIFER!"_

**Tbc**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the prompt  
> _______________  
> < Lucifer dies and wakes up in the Silver City. He's so confused he stumbles out of there and flies back to earth immediately. He jokes about a clerical error to Chloe's distraught relief. But then he dies again. And again. And he keeps winding up in heaven, and leaving before anyone sees him. He's starting to think maybe his dad is trying to tell him something?>


	5. Door & paperwork

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments on the last chap. I hope you'll appreciate this one all the same. Oh, and yes; I did change the summary now that I write the last chapters in French.  
> Enjoy!

**DOOR AND PAPERWORK**

5

* * *

He hates himself.

He hates that he doesn't hate this feeling, even though he now knows what it exactly is. 

After three failed attempts, three senses of déjà vu before even opening his eyes - not yet - he could hardly keep denying what's going on with him. 

He hates not being able to do so, not being able to pretend that there's still pain, that it keeps spreading despite this place and his bond to it. From Light, he'd gladly accept blindness; from warmth, irreversible burns - anything to find that little something from Hell that would prevent any hopes. 

There is nothing for him here, never was there. 

This can't change now.

He hasn't, no offense to Linda's beliefs. 

But some things do change, not the things that his therapist says they are - nothing coming even close to some preposterous redemption for the monster he is, that he'll stay forever. Not this place, obviously; his bedroom is as he left it, his siblings' voices buzzing in his mind like the exact same servile swarm from their early years. 

All these things he notices, everything crossing his mind, everything he breathes... everything turns into a fatality against which he's barely able to fight. His body doesn't want to. Why would it? This is where he was 'born', as much as any angel can compare his creation to a 'birth'. This is the place where he feels this deep connection again, every star dancing in the heavens, every lighting effects in every corridor, room, hall and bloody alcove.

He hates himself. 

He hates himself for getting back a taste for this feeling when he should be repulsed by it. 

He hates the moan coming out of his mouth when the light passes from one shoulder blade to the other, when this warmth doesn't left any burns in its wake. 

He moans with pleasure.

With pleasure. 

Not in pain. 

He hates to feel his wings beneath him, the feathers that move up and down on the thin sheets, the ones touching the floor. The spark of power, of belonging, that rises from the paving stone is even more hateful. 

His sigh... it sounds bloody disgusting. 

He inhales and shuts his eyes. If he can't have dazzling blindness, night blindness will do just as well. If he's not in Hell, imagining it in a blink might change things, or at least his way of reacting to it. If he still has his wings, he can wrap himself with them as well, protect the small amount of common sense He leaves him so far. 

He. That 'He' who's getting close, too close. 

Lucifer shivers, tenses, then shivers again; exhausted, appeased, furious, boosted, nauseated... tired, so tired of fighting, of no longer know how to do so. 

The 'close' becomes 'near'. 

He curls up, lets his wings embrace him to the verge of suffocation - to the verge of hateful serenity - until he feels Him too much close. 

His voice is close to a whisper - not the raging cry stuck in his throat after another moan; docile, fearful, eager to please Him. "Go… go 'ay. I don't wa—"

He hates wanting to see Him, hates not wanting to see Him leave, not wanting to leave with same strong will. 

He hates Him. 

He hates himself. 

Nothing's changed. 

**-xXx-**

Chloe hasn't opened her eyes yet that she knows she's in an unfamiliar place. Trixie doesn't cry in the morning, and neither does Lucifer. 

Lucifer.

That's the name she needs to remember the rest. That and another cry in the bedroom next to hers. She remembers, but keeps the memories behind other thoughts; simple, factual thoughts. She thinks of how her eyes burn under her still closed eyelids, how soft the skin of her face feels to the touch.

As soft as baby's skin.

But babies cry a lot. She hasn't cried as much, not as often, for three decades. She thinks of Charlie crying, whining until his mother comes to get him prepared before the day nursery for him and work for Mommy. She thinks that she's not concerned about either one this morning, that she could listen to her body, make one with Maze's mattress; surprisingly soft for its owner's obvious harshness. 

She thinks of keeping her eyes shut. 

She thinks about not thinking anymore. 

She also thinks of the nightmares she has had during the last short night, those waiting her for going out of the bed, of Maze's bedroom. 

She's thinking too much, probably way too much. 

That's what happens when things don't make sense, when it takes a ridiculous amount of time to explain them. 

Chloe keeps her ears open.

That's what makes her get out of bed, out of the bedroom shortly after. Pushed all the way downstairs, she keeps listening carefully, looking into the smallest corners of the living room, through the window - Not seeing, nor hearing the person she wants to. 

All she hears is Linda offering her breakfast. 

She's about to refuse, called to order by her basic needs with a grumpy gurgling. 

Right... thinking of herself; human, hungry, exhausted, worried. 

Breakfast, coffee... it'd help her think more, about what to do next. 

Linda doesn't look like she needs to think, anyway. She prepares breakfast for them both, for the little one who no longer cries and watches his mother. Charlie smiles, and so does Chloe. But it doesn't last; because she keeps thinking, waiting for this very specific noise outside. 

But it doesn't come. 

"How was your night? Not too rough?" Linda asks her as she is busy looking for something in the fridge. 

Chloe appreciates that she hasn't used the common version of this question, an uncaring version when you know what happened yesterday. 'Sleep well' would have been an insult for her pain. 

She gives her a half-shrug. "Full of nightmares, dismembered wi—"

She stops, both for her anger and pain. Also for Charlie. He doesn't yet understand everything that's said and done around him, but she wouldn't want to be the one who'd bring him into this 'odd' natural stuff, not that early. Besides, she wouldn't be surprised if he understands more than human childs do.

Not at all.

She noticed how he looks at her sometimes.

With that little something she noticed in Luc—

Chloe smiles, moves a lock of hair behind her ear. "I mean… you know what I mean. Last night was as rough as it was expected." She bites her lip, her fingers draw nonsensical signs on the table. "I was expecting some change this morning."

Linda smiles back and puts an empty mug before her. "Wait for my cappuccino with triple chantilly - it'll change everything!"

Chloe smiles so as not to cry. She's tired of crying, as are her eyes and face. She can't keep burning them with tears for the Devil, nor pretend to have softer skin than Charlie who's trying to take her spoon on the table. 

Cappuccino is indeed a source of change; simple and pleasant. It's a start, to think less of the lump in her throat, to subjugate the sobs lurking inside. She takes a few sips, runs her tongue over her upper lip covered with cream and then looks at the window again. "How long do you think it'll be?" 

Linda turns around, follows her gaze. "It's hard to tell." 

"It's been hours."

"I know."

" 'Hours' is long enough, isn't it?" Chloe's voice is shaking, her hands clenched around the half-sipped mug. 

Linda sits on the chair to her left. Good choice, she'd have blocked Chloe's sight by sitting on her right. Her place is next to her son; between him and her friend who's waiting for a sound, a silhouette, through that window. 

Chloe knits her brows in deep thoughts. 

He won't necessarily come through the front door. He might come upstairs, or next to the dining table, who knows? 

She doesn't. 

She doesn't know what to think. 

She jumps slightly when Linda's hand touches her forearm. "Time concept is like second instinct for Amenadiel. Leave him some, he and Maze, okay?" 

Chloe nods, takes a deep breath, dives into an all new anguished thought. Not that new, but it resonates ever more strongly in her mind, like something new, after each of her refusals to think too much of it. 

"You think…." She gulps, rubs her hands from the handle to the edges of the mug. "You think that-... if it's taking that long, then maybe he's—?" 

Linda's hand squeezes her arm. 

"He's not. And even if he was... they'd have warned us by now. Don't worry."

"I- you're right." 

Chloe shakes her head and dispels a tear with her thumb, then smiles at her friend. "And here I thought I couldn't more cry than yesterday!" she exclaims, her sob wrapped with faked laugh following another unstoppable tear. "Well, it's hardly a change...."

Linda reassures her, "Chloe, that's perfectly normal. What you... what happened yesterday deserves some tears, don't you think?" 

"Maybe. Yes. I mean- I should be used to see Lucifer—"

Saying his name gives power to tears, anger, to any other thoughts she's held back so far, as best as she could. She'd want to scream, smash her mug to the floor, pull back the curtains from the window so that she'd have clearer vision of the outside.

Clearer vision. 

That would be a change, for sure. 

Chloe wipes her face with her sleeve instead; graceless parry, but it's quite effective, especially since she used the last handkerchief of the house last night. 

Linda rubs her forearm while she gets a grip on herself. "Being used to it or not, what Lucifer did yesterday wasn't some usual event. This was different." 

Chloe nods, pulls on her damp sleeve. "You're right. So _many_ differences between someone else killing Lucifer and Lucifer nearly killing himself by cu— 'Sounds totally different, an angel willingly unwinged." A half-surprised, half-anguished exclamation comes out of her lips a little while after. "We can consider ourselves lucky that Amenadiel answered my prayer that fast! I'd never think that angel feathers could— you know, resurrecting this stupid bastard!" 

Angel's feathers could do many things, miracles for sure, but... this kind of miracle, with another miracle in the same room, that was—

It was miraculous, more than that. 

It was incredible.

Unhoped for.

She hadn't lost hope, not in front of so much amount of blood, neither when she tripped over one of the severed wings before falling to her hands and knees, the tops of her sleeves soaked with blood in seconds. She hadn't lost hope at the deathly quiet answer of his heart under her palm, with death in his gaze while terror inhabits hers. 

She had still hope when Amenadiel had arrived, when he had placed two of his feathers - small, looking fragile - on the incisions, wide and deep, right between this bastard's shoulder blades. 

Despair had only come the next second, had only been consumed by the following one; quiet, without divine glow, heartbeat and scarring over the harm he'd done to himself. The harm he'd done to her by not coming back _, really_ not coming back this time. 

Chloe is a miracle. 

After a minute filled with her supplications and Amenadiel's mumbled support, she was no longer expecting one; because she's a miracle, because her presence had no influence on his condition. Perhaps she had made things happen by coming to Lux, but it had been too late at this moment, hadn't it?

He'd made this happen, all of it.

Self-mutilation, deliberately risking his life - it wasn't someone else's fault, the fault of her miraculous presence nearby. Lucifer is at fault, hm and nobody else.

He had led her to despair. 

He'd led her to really consider the rest of her life on Earth without him... for five interminable minutes of feathers and blood. 

Five. Minutes.

Long... very long, desperate timing to suddenly come back to life. 

Barely alive, but yes... _alive._

She's been thinking about this word, desperately holding onto it since last night. 

She's holding up.

But he'd let go.

She can't stop thinking about it. 

"Guess angels are full of surprises," Linda says.

"You're telling me."

Chloe shakes her head and looks straight ahead, then Charlie who looks back at her. So many things in his eyes that she can't understand.... 

"What the hell was he thinking, Linda?" she whispers, turning to her friend shortly afterwards.

The latter takes her hand off her arm, less inclined to reassure her about this part. But it's the only one that really matters, the only one that obsesses her thoughts, more than hearing news of Lucifer from his brother's mouth, from Mazikeen's.

She loses hope of knowing, of understanding.

She needs to know! To know if it's her fault, Lucifer's, someone else's fault, or anyone's fault. She felt guilty for the last two deaths, she almost feels the same for this one; she's half a mind to plunge into the depths of hell, her personal hell. So...

So she could at least know if she's right to feel this way, couldn't she?

"Linda, please. I-"

Linda stops her, lifts her hand. "Chloe, don't. I'll give you the same answer as yesterday - 'Our talks are covered by medical confidentiality, whether he's the Devil or not'."

Chloe sighs; long exhalation of guilt, frustration. Of reflection, too. 

"It's not valid confidentiality here, though."

Linda shakes her head. "Chloe…"

"Therapists are authorized to share useful information about their patient if they pose a threat to themselves or others." 

"True. Sharing with other doctors or police officers, no to close relation."

That she knows, yes. 

"Well, just think of me as such then," Chloe suggests her, continuing, following Linda's sigh and her firmer expression after that; "I'm detective and I'm officially asking you useful information for my ongoing investigation. Nothing more... just what I need to know to… to understand. Okay?"

She thinks she failed to convince Linda when she gets up from her chair and takes Charlie in her arms. She thinks this between a slight caress on his cheek, when she kisses him on the forehead, until she sighs heavily as she strokes his back. 

"Fine. Just what you need to know."

Chloe thinks to hide her smile by sipping what's left of her cappuccino.

**-xXx-**

It quickly turns into endless waiting until Chloe sits on the couch of the living room where she keeps waiting for any sounds from the outside. Phone ringing - hers, Linda's -, a knock on the front door, footsteps of a single person, two... three people? 

Three would be unexpected. 

But she doesn't expect that much. She knows him. 

From this tiny rational part lingering in her mind, Chloe realizes that Lucifer's okay - 'better' than when she left him last night, anyway. He was breathing, he still does; probably... if she's still waiting for changing news. It's totally conceivable that he wouldn't come himself to reassure her if he ever gets better than 'better', better than 'fine'. She won't be surprised. 

He won't, not in person.

Over the phone? Maybe, and again...

It's Lucifer.

As 'honest' as he claims himself to be, he stays one of the most talented person she ever knows for ignoring the elephant - the supernatural mastodon - in the room. 

And the last mastodon seems too... _bulky_ to bypass on her own. 

"Okay!" Linda exclaims as she closed the front door, Charlie gone with the babysitter. "Let's do this." 

She sits next to her, puts her hands on her thighs and waits.

Endless waiting.

"I feel uncomfortable with this," Linda whispers suddenly. "Still feels like I'm breaking my oath somehow."

"You won't," Chloe reassures her. "You're just gonna give me basic information that won't affect his therapy, what's the most relevant for the case, okay? Like you did, back to the time I'd found out everything, remember?" 

Linda nods, smiles at her. "It was all coming down to one simple question, though."

Chloe remembers. Of course she does, how could she forget?

_"Do you want him in your life or not?"_

"Yes, well... it's all about the same now, isn't it? Does he still want me in his life or not?" Chloe whispers.

Linda presses her lips together, fiddles with her bracelet. "I'm sorry, Chloe; I can't answer you without... you know?"

Chloe nods and gives her a reassuring, trembling smile. "I know. I'm sorry, too - 'not my best 'professional' approach."

"It's hard not to get emotional when Lucifer's involved," her friend sympathizes. 

"It is, indeed." 

Chloe takes a deep breath, runs her hands through her hair before moving them to her lips, fingers crossed over the implored and improvised professional talk. What would she ask if it wasn't for him? 

How to understand without asking too personal answers that she clearly wouldn't have from Lucifer, for so many reasons?

That's more than one single question. 

"Okay, so… the session, was it scheduled?" 

Neutral ground, an inconsequential start that would already give her some information, a confirmation of what she'd already suspected since she hurriedly left the precinct. 

"No. Our meetings are unplanned ones half of the time, whenever it pleases Lucifer. Yesterday session was no exception." 

"How was he when he arrived? Was he quiet or...?"

"Agitated. Judging by his appearance, I immediately thought he hadn't slept properly for days."

Chloe nods. "You thought right about that." 

"Did you ask him why he didn't sleep?" Linda asked her, caught in the game - another kind of professional reflex -, frowning. 

Another nod, then Chloe gently shakes her head, repeating the evasive answer she had gotten from him; " 'Troubles with illogicalness' - that's what he said."

"That's what he'd want..." Linda sighs, rubbing her thighs up to her knees.

"So, he told you something?"

"Yes."

Linda's reluctant to say more about this, she can tell.

"Linda, this is the information I need," Chloe insists. "You'd tell me for any other investigation! Which _illogicalness_ have you broached with him during his unplanned session yesterday morning?" 

Linda rubs her hands over her black pants; once, twice. She sighs heavily, resigned not to being able to follow strict professional rules. But she's her friend, she's worried about her patient, worried that she can't help him through this on her own. 

Chloe worries more than she can bear and she counts on Linda's worry to appease hers. Maybe it's not professional, rational, reasonable or even worthy of their deep friendship... maybe.

But this is Lucifer they're talking about.

Nothing is ever strictly professional, rational, reasonable or worthy of a deep friendship with him. 

It's strictly... Lucifer. 

"He was upset because he didn't die as usual."

"What? What's that even supposed to mean?"

Linda moves her hands off her knees. "I can't tell you more about this. I'm really close to break medical confidentiality."

"But-... that makes no sense, it's—"

"It does," her friend says, shaking her head. "It makes so much sense that he reacted to it as usual." 

As usual. 

Lucifer's usual reaction to death, unusual one, according to him….

Repeating these clues makes even less sense to Chloe. 

She shakes her head, opens her mouth, stopped by Linda's lifted hand. "Do you mind if we… switch 'professional' roles for a second?" 

"Well… if it helps me to understand, I'm in."

"You asked me about his behavior when he came in my office, which means you noticed that something was wrong with him before, didn't you?" 

Chloe nods for any answer.

"How exactly did you notice that?" 

Before she can think about it, Linda gives her one last recommendation - as friendly as it's professional, with an encouraging smile; "Look hard about it, Chloe." 

Looking hard. 

This is a very professional, usual act that helps her organize her thoughts. She folds her hands, elbows resting on her knees, and thinks of what had led her to notice this odd oddity in their lives. 

"Paperwork," she says at first.

First sign, the most obvious, recent one.

"He usually avoids paperwork like the plague…" she whispers, smiling at memories of his past skillful dodges for this 'sleep-inducing' task.

Sleep-inducing....

"He wasn't sleeping either. Sleeping very bad, at best. I heard him mumbling in his sleep one night... it was weird."

"Why is that?" 

Chloe breathes in, out, then frowns. She sees Lucifer lying next to her again, legs tangled in the sheets, his bare chest exposed to moonlight. She remembers how his skin looked like it was shining somehow, how warm he was to the touch, back to normal temperature the next second. She'd thought she had dreamed this. 

She bites her lip, thinking of his moving on syllables; quiet ones at first, then whispered words to the moon, to her. 

"He was mumbling something about a… a door? That it wasn't 'possible'..." Chloe repeats.

Linda nods, encouraging her; "what else?"

"I don't know," she sighs. 

"Yes, you do. You live with him half the time, you spend the other half working together... you _know._ " 

Chloe shakes her head. "No, I d—"

"You know his habits…" Linda almost harasses her. "You know that something's changed, something more important than his sudden insomnia or his new found-passion for paperwork." 

"I know he died; three times since he's been back!" Chloe explodes.

She jumps on her feet, walks to the front door and then turns around and walks back to the living room, to Linda who's calmly sitting where she left her, calm, holding an essential answer that Chloe can no longer calmly wait for. 

"He repeatedly died before my very eyes... This is—" She holds back another sob with another sleeve rub at the corner of her eye. "That's the biggest change. That's what's bothering him, you said it yourself." 

"Well, not exactly." 

"So what?!" 

"You know 'what'," Linda says, not losing her cool once. "What's changed since all those deaths? What has he done, or not done, since then?" 

"He cut his w—"

Chloe's voice dies in her throat. She think of what he did, what he didn't do.

She knows.

Amenadiel, Linda, Maze; everyone knows. She knows more than every one of them what Lucifer didn't do before 'doing' something, something usual. It's so usual that she blames herself for not seeing it coming. 

She knows how he is.

Denying the problem first, then drastically dealing with it - this is customary, coming from the Devil, a stupid angel, the one who's been sharing her bed almost every night for a year. Who had shared something else with her since then, which he had left aside for a few days. 

Since the lake.

"His wings," she breathes. 

Chloe looks at Linda, walks back to her, sits down beside her. 

"I hadn't seen them out for a week. Not since- since he…." Hands pressed together in front of her mouth, she closes her eyes and shakes her head; mortified. "And he cut them off yesterday." 

"Because he didn't die as usual," Linda says again.

Chloe stares at her, gazing at the table, the door and then her friend again. 

"Hell's got thousands... billions of doors," she says, looking ahead this time. "He told me about this death, the one to prevent mine, with Dr. Carlisle... how he'd been locked behind one of these doors, torturing himself for killing Uriel." 

This time, Chloe lets her tears flow. 

"What he mumbled in his sleep… I thought it was about that door. I thought he went back there; after the shooting, after the lake. And yesterday...." 

She turns to Linda, smiles; salty smile.

An open door. 

"But I had it all wrong, hadn't I?" 

She blinks back tears, tastes the next ones. 

"Hell isn't the only place with doors, is it?" she asks to her friend who smiles, shaking her head gently. 

The front door opens, all her thoughts rush in as she turns to Amenadiel standing there, exhausted, bearing news.

Chloe hopes with all her heart not to be mistaken by interpreting his arrival as good ones. 

**Tbc**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chap is the biggest of the story (the last will be short - like the first one). It'll take time to translate, but I hope to finish it for next Monday. If not, don't worry - it'll be updated during the week.  
> Also, I'm working back on 'I will not say goodbye' (and 'Hell Sweet Hell' at the same time) - so you won't have to wait long for the next chap either. 
> 
> As for 'In the Beginning' series - I'm busy editing it from the start, once it's done - I'll keep translating, I promise ;)


	6. For feathers and fears

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big big chapter coming here! I had to write it three times before coming to this one. 'totally worthes it! I had a lot of fun with this part of the story.  
> I hope you'll enjoy it just the same.

**FOR FEATHERS AND FEARS**

6

* * *

Chloe's not sure why she expects to see more blood than she left when she entered the penthouse. Nor does she know why this fear is followed by another one after observing the surroundings without any other sign of human presence than hers. 

Amenadiel wouldn't have lied, neither would Mazikeen who stayed downstairs for a few drinks.

Or bottles?

Chloe hadn't shown much interest in those details.

She had only lingered on a few sentences, like _"Yup', still breathing... he keeps sulking, though."_ and _"Maybe he'll stop as soon as you join him, 'might even start something else?"_ then the demon had put an end to their little talk with a wink and another shot drunk in one go.

If Maze's last innuendo did involve some private start, Chloe can't say she's in the mood for this. Neither is Lucifer, apparently. 

He's not here. 

They said he'd be here. 

Alone.

Chloe brushes her palms together. She's no more comfortable knowing that he's been alone so far - who knows how long Mazikeen has been drinking every bottle of the club's bar? Did she at least wait five minutes after Amenadiel's departure to leave Lucifer all by himself? 

She takes a deep long breath, dispelling at least one of the three fears swirling in her mind. 

Lucifer gave his word to his brother. 

She can count on that, for lack of Mazikeen's psychological support. 

The first of her fears also disappears after taking a few steps in the living room; no trace of blood, fresh as old. The floor is immaculate.

You'd almost think that nothing bad happened yesterday. 

The traces are somewhere else, though. Chloe sees them, they feed her last, ongoing painful fear. She runs her hand over each empty bottle, tilted on the marble bar; she steps over another that rolls under one of the seats and soils the immaculate floor. She looks at the piano, its uncovered keys abandoned with notes that she could almost hear sound in this deathly silence. She looks at the glass left untouched on the instrument, the cigarette in the same state - unsmoked, left right in the middle of the cendar. 

She stops near the keyboard, notices his phone in the middle of the piano, hidden behind the glass. Abandoned there, the many ringtones of Chloe's calls probably covered by Lucifer's relentless touch over these keys - until she stops calling him, until he stops ignoring her. 

He still does, though. 

Leaning heavily on the railing, his profile lifted towards the starry skies, he pretends not to see her, nor hearing her slow footsteps around his piano.

Chloe pretends not to feel upset, not to fear coming any closer. 

She takes the glass, inhales the scotch scent - abandoned for stubborn contemplation of nocturnal skies - before joining him. 

Without a word, she puts her arms under his and presses her chest against him. She shuts her eyes, presses her cheek against his back to sense some change. The creased fabric, the slight quivering under this cheek, under this hand. The heartbeat going from her palm to this slight vibration between his shoulder blades; this is a comforting echo. 

It beats faster in the seconds that follow, far from ignoring her presence as Lucifer claims to do. 

He doesn't pretend much the next moment, when Chloe moves her head and voluntarily presses on other muscles. His hand squeezes the railing, makes the glass crack as Chloe's hand moves from his bare chest to his ribs, sensitive but less than the muscles under her cheek. She'd just need to press them harder... right there, for them to come out.

That's comforting.

Feeling them again, knowing they're hidden, sensitive to her touch... again.

She didn't expect so much from Amenadiel's feathers.

When she left Lux last night, Lucifer's back was barely healing. 

From the front of his open shirt over his bare torso, Chloe brings her free hand down his lower back, up to his vanished wounds, where supernatural muscles and human tension roll under her fingers. No more torn flesh, no more blood or severed nerves suddenly covered by blinding light. 

It's all here, in its rightful place.

His rightful place….

Lucifer meets little resistance when he takes Chloe's hand in his, slowly lifting her slender fingers and filled glass to his lips. She closes her eyes once more as she feels his breath, his fingers passing over her skin, supporting this tiny weight together. 

Alcohol flows between his lips, on her palm, her thumb. 

Chloe keeps her eyes shut the whole time. She shows no more resistance when he takes the empty glass off her hand, jumping just when his lips taste what's left of the alcohol. 

The amber-colored drop on her thumbnail, the wet line all along her index finger. 

She holds her breath as she feels his lips rid her of the very last traces of alcohol on her palm, her left one pressed against Lucifer's back. Her breathing follows the progression of Lucifer's mouth over her skin - slow, heady, series of kisses from the wrist to the elbow. Lucifer's slow movement, Chloe's free hand moving from his back to his neck all along this procession; slow urgency that neither of them wish to speed up.

Chloe scratches the back of his neck for a single kiss on hers, bites her lip for his biting response, her fear as much scratched as she mistreats his. 

Brutal and invigorating comfort for each other; with each other, in this life, still alive. 

Chloe is pleased to make him vulnerable.

She is when she tastes blood in her mouth, running her tongue over Lucifer's lower lip who groans, moans; who breathes, lets her listen to his strong heartbeats as he presses their bodies together against the patio door, who makes her feel his miraculous healing - in a slow, urgent movement - penetrating procession of a comforting feeling. 

She is pleased to make him pay for what he dared to do to her, making him pay for this extra waiting time, until tonight, to the door slipping against her blouse, then sticking to her skin. It vibrates slightly, strongly with each new second, with each new strong move, breath, sound and kiss given by one, welcomed by the other. 

She is pleased to feel him alive, loudly repentant in her arms.

Paying his debt and she, hers. 

Both vulnerable, both unforgivable. 

**-xXx-**

"That's good to know…." Chloe whispers. 

She can feel Lucifer moving, his cheek going up to her belly button. She shivers with his steady breathing, although no more than with the wind rushing through the open bedroom window. 

It's hard to be cold in the Devil's arms.

"To know what?" 

"That dying three times doesn't have the slightest effect on your stamina."

Not the slightest.

Her mortal body in his arms can testify; exhausted by his attentive, brutal care, imbued with vulnerable passion. Three honest testimonies of a return to normal that still prevent her from getting up from that bed without falling on the floor.

No, four times. 

She forgets what happened from the first stair step to the last one. The Armenian wall remembers it much better than she does, with its grazed corner turned into rubble and dust on the floor where Lucifer had—

Not the slightest effect on his stamina, indeed. 

Chloe feels Lucifer tense against her.

"Nothing will ever affect my stamina," he says, kissing her belly. 

"What about your soul?"

"My soul?" he repeats. 

Chloe watches him lay his chin on her belly, looking at her with increasing perplexity. She discerns a gleam of fear in his eyes, skillfully hidden by all those little things that make him the tempting Devil he is; his smile, his fingers making their way between her thighs, his wild hair asking for another stroke, another demonstration of his infallible libido. 

She nods, places her hands on the top of his cheeks and thus prevents a more invasive attempt of evasion. "I talked to Linda." 

"Did you now?" 

"It's not like I had anything else to do while waiting to hear from you," she explains herself without really knowing why.

Although this isn't real explanation, but rather a reproach for a nearly forgiven fault. All she needs is a little something to move on.

A talk. 

"She is gonna hear from me about 'breaking doctor-patient privilege', that's for sure," Lucifer mumbles as he sits up next to her.

'Away' from her, though.

"I was already aware that something was wrong, you know? You could have a bit more confidence in my discernment.... And Linda didn't _break_ anything. She's way too smart to fall into the trap." 

"Can't argue with that."

Chloe watches him; sitting with his back straight against the headboard, busy looking for a cigarette in the open drawer of the bedside table. She takes the lighter from his hands the next second, to which he sighs before starting to fiddle with the white cylinder filled with blond tobacco. 

"We need to talk about this, Lucifer." 

"You talked to my therapist, didn't you? I don't see the point of 'talking to me' then."

"The point is that it might prevent you from giving up on us." 

Lucifer drops his cigarette that rolls in the sheets and disappears from her sight. He stares at her, looking surprised. "Why would I do such a thing?"

"Because I make you vulnerable?" 

Lucifer lets out a stunned exclamation, Chloe not losing her serious, anxious expression once. 

A line appeared between his brows. "Linda did hold her tongue," he says. "Otherwise you'd know that I don't bloody care about that!" 

His face hardens with hurt.

"You should've known that by now...." he whispers, looking away.

"Lucifer-"

She moves her hand from his thigh to his torso, but he turns away, leaving her embrace and the sheets to walk towards the balcony. His naked body, a muscular expression of his thoughts, stands out in the darkness of Los Angeles.

Of course.

He's the Devil.

Chloe lets her gaze moving from the base of his neck down to his back, to his muscles following the rest of his leaned body over the railing.

An angel, too.

First and foremost.

With a sigh, Chloe leans over and picks up Lucifer's crumpled shirt at the foot of the bed before putting it on. She only buttons it to the middle and only releases her loose hair from the collar after crossing the threshold of the balcony. 

She's much more sensitive to drafts than he is, vulnerable angel - and Devil - or not. 

For the second time this evening, one of her arms goes under his, her left hand at the level of his biceps, the right gently massaging the spot between his wrist and his bent fingers around the glass railing. 

"Lucifer, I know that." 

He keeps looking straight ahead. But he doesn't push her away. Not like lately, with his subtly strange dodges, neither roughly.

So she pushes her luck. "What I also know is that you're not the type of person who 'puts up with' whatever happens to him." 

"And that's a bad thing?" 

Chloe hides the relief she feels from this reaction with a smile, a pressure on his wrist, a caress from shoulder to elbow. "When you come to nearly die... a little bit, yeah." 

"That wasn't intentional," he says defensively. 

"Not for the last two times, but yesterday-"

"I miscalculated the risks. I didn't plan for you to come here."

"Would you listen to yourself?" Chloe finally exclaims after pulling him by the arm and force him to look at her. "You talk about this like it's... like it's _no big deal!_ Your death _is_ a big deal, Lucifer!" 

_"Well, it shouldn't be!"_ He explodes as well, freeing himself from her grasp. 

Chloe doesn't have time to contradict him that he turns and walks away from her. He comes back to her shortly afterwards; fury, disarray, everything he feels laid bare in the night, before his partner's sad gaze. 

"It should be nothing more than what it has always been," he says more calmly, a hand on the railing. His gaze gets lost beyond that. Below. "Things shouldn't change." 

"But the fact is, they change."

Chloe waits to join him, to touch him, to feel his pulse under her fingers, the warmth of his skin against hers, to continue. "Things have changed since you moved here, since you met me. You're not alone anymore, not immortal, not as insufferable as you used to be. You've _changed."_

He sighs, shakes his head. "You've talked a lot with Linda... it's the only explanation for you wanting that much to see a change in me."

Deep annoyance gleams in his eyes.

"Also, I've never been 'insufferable'. I'm beyond compare."

Chloe smiles, amused. "Of course you are. So you agree to say that you're kind of... special?" 

"Unique," he corrects her. 

"So, couldn't someone 'unique' change things as unchangeable as his destination after death?"

Lucifer freezes. Chloe holds her breath. 

"Linda talks too much," he grumbles after a while, not giving a real answer. 

It's Chloe's turn to sigh. When she does, she moves aside, gives him an annoyed glare. "You could have a little more faith in my detective's skills!"

The smile on his face awakens a desire that isn't welcome in such a conversation. Although their outfits - or the lack of it - and their closeness indulge such desire. Chloe does her best to ignore hers, to ignore the pleasant warm pressure spreading within her belly and thighs, the touch of his thighs too. 

"The Devil… 'having faith', Detective?"

"'Trust', then?" she tries. 

"I do trust you," he reassures her more seriously. 

"But not everyone."

He's silent, looks away. 

"Lucifer, I know you've never openly blamed me for making you vulnerable, that you don't care about my 'God's miracle' side, but-" Chloe takes a deep breath, crosses her arms over her chest. "But still, you did blame me for it. In your own way."

Her words make him turn his head and open his mouth in a loud protest that she stops with a lifted hand.

"You did, you told me yourself. When you found out I was making you mortal, you avoided me for three weeks. My miracle side? You went to Vegas. You came back two weeks later married to a stripper!"

"Exotic dancer."

Her glare prevents him from any further comment on the aforesaid profession. 

"And now... after three deaths, three resurrections…."

She hesitates briefly before stating a truth that he still cannot bear to hear; to the point of cutting his wings, to the point of keeping her in the dark, in guilt and panic of losing him. She hesitates then remembers that Maze took care to remove all weapons - both deadly and supernatural - from the penthouse. She remembers that Lucifer swore that he would no longer mutilate himself. 

But he promised to his brother, not to her. 

She knows him well enough to fear a dodge of his own on this kind of things.

She knows him, knows his fears - hurting her is the scariest. 

She can trust that. 

"After three round trips between here and the Silver City... you might as well start blaming me for this again. You might want to avoid me so you don't have to come face to face with that door again." 

Chloe gently shakes her head before chewing on her bottom lip, her eyes going from Lucifer's tense chest to the profuse lights of the city below. 

"You've become a paperwork Devil," she whispers, her voice wavering on the last word. 

If that's not a clear sign of change... 

He can't deny it. 

He never lies. 

"How do you know about the door?" 

She turns to him. He; ramrod straight in the dark night, against a backdrop of lights that is probably a poor version of those in his very first home. Home? No, this was the place where he was born, which had turned him into the Devil, then into an angel again. She looks him closely, following the line of his neck, his shoulders, his perfect torso. She lets her eyes coming back to his after lingering on his jaw, his chin, that line she liked to kiss, to bite hard enough to draw blood as well....

Was he born like this?

Without anything else, nothing less than perfection sculpted to his Father's expectations?

With that gaze?

If he's asking about the door, it means that Linda never knew about it. 

"You mumble in your sleep," she explains. 

He arches an eyebrow, clearly skeptical. Right, she's always kept that information for herself. 

She arches her eyebrows too, then smirks. "What, you didn't know?" 

Lucifer scratches his beard, leaving his scepticism for growing annoyance. "I always thought Amenadiel was lying about that, actually. That and the snoring. I talk in my sleep, do I? Is it a regular thing?"

Chloe nods, her smile as high as her ears can be while she recalls a sleeping Devil in some indoor parking. "The first time, you asked me - and I quote - to 'fetch you the goat'." 

"Okay, now I know you're lying!"

She laughs. "To the Devil? I would never!" 

The Devil laughs too, short frivolity that fades as the seconds go by, as his gaze passes over the buildings, their peaks, over far higher peaks.

"Why didn't you tell me, Lucifer?" Chloe asks him. "For weeks, no... _months_ , I thought you were mad at me for bringing you back to Hell. _Twice!"_

"I told you I didn't care. I still do."

"Liar."

He turns to her; jaws, hand clenched on the railing, on the anger simmering inside him. 

_"Chloe…"_ he growls.

She shakes her head sharply, not averting her gaze, gazing at him with the same anger barely contained by their past lovemaking. "You're lying to yourself!" 

He lets out a mocking exclamation. She lets her anger out, the one he just mocked. 

Doesn't it matter what she feels, what she felt? What his pathological denial provokes doesn't matter to him? 

"You cut your wings off, you intentionally took that risk so you wouldn't have to face the truth, so don't you dare telling me you're not lying here." 

"This isn't the truth, just obnoxious _practical joke_!" 

Chloe won't let go of this. "Once, maybe twice…"

He looks away. 

"But three times? In just a few months?"

This third time, what had happened before; it had shown his determination to regain control, to flee this illogical change in his life by all means necessary. Mutilation is only the first step - rough and reckless - in a succession of others. 

Anything he did just to break up with Eve, to stop a prophecy... 

Anything he could do to stop death, to stop what would follow for him. 

Lucifer finds his way back to her gaze after Chloe's last words. She finds the answer, the truth, deep inside his, in his gestures - agitated, on the verge of the emotional explosion that had led him to another gesture. 

She sees him rubbing the back of her neck. She breathes a little easier. 

That gesture has been erased.

Now she would like to erase the shadow hovering over his eyes, over their heads.

"The truth is that the door itself isn't problematic...."

Chloe frowns at that. 

"Who's waiting for me behind it is, though." 

"Behind?"

Lucifer nods.

"Who's waiting for you behind that door?" Chloe insists. 

The sigh coming out of his lips is heavy, not light. "My Father."

_Oh._

Chloe opens her mouth, tries to breathe rather than interpret. "L-literally or...?" 

Having reached his maximum of articulacy on the subject, Lucifer answers with another nod - quick and tense. 

"Oh," she breathes. " _Wow,_ I-... did He tell you something? About how you ended up there instead of Hell?" 

Lack of eloquence is followed by the Devil's flee. Surprised, Chloe lets him go back inside and pass the bed; she even lets him put his robe on and walk down the first stair steps to the living room before even thinking of following him. 

Her bare feet leave the steps when the couch welcomes the Devil wrapped in black satin at waist height. 

"Lucifer-"

"There's nothing to say, Chloe. Honestly... nothing." 

Maybe it's this umpteenth evasion, maybe it's his nonchalant intonation or the fact that he's taking a bottle that has previously rolled under the couch that inflames the situation. Maybe it's him, maybe it's her who's sick and tired of him, of his answers - which aren't real answers -, of his jokes sounding wrong in the middle of this... dramatic atmosphere.

Maybe it's her. 

She's the one who can't stand this anymore, she's the one who shouts and he's the one who freezes on the couch, bottle in hand, as he hears her shouting reply. "Well, you're a far cry of the truth, because I-... I've many things to say about it!"

"This is about _me._ I—"

Chloe gives a bitter laugh at that, shaking her head, hands on her hips. "You bet!"

Lucifer looks at her like she just spat in his drink. _"I beg your pardon?!"_

"This is about _everyone!"_ she cries, spreading her arms wide. "It's about _me_ , about Linda, Charlie, Maze, Trixie, Amenadiel... Anyone sharing your life, anyone who wants you to stay that way, alive! The ones you've simply ignored because of your tear-jerking _narcissism!_ Ella, Dan—" she keeps quoting. 

Lucifer brutally puts the bottle on the table, the alcohol spurting from the neck to the edge of the coffee table; bouncing proof of the Devil's narcissism and compulsive dramatic side. His red glare is yet irrefutable proof that she's right. 

_"Don't you da—"_ he threatens her, yet not succeeding once to frighten her. 

"And now you're trying to scare the shit out of me for not facing your own fears," she cuts him off. 

She shakes her head. "I shouldn't be surprised, I guess. But... It pains me to see you acting so, Lucifer."

It stops him in his tracks, at least. She feels it does, because she doesn't want to look at him after that. It's comforting to feel him tense, as much as no longer hear the alcohol flowing in his glass, then his throat; in streams of denial that will soon drown him. 

She's relieved that he's quiet, that he's listening - a little. 

"It pains me that you think more of yourself than of us, of me, of my fears. I mean—! Look around you! Look at us...."

She doesn't do it herself, barely, her eyes stopped at her open collar, the line of her breasts that he touched, sucked, nibbled....

She nibbles her lip. "We had sex."

"Yes. 'We'," he whispers from the couch. "This wasn't just about me, was it?" 

"Not if it was to avoid talking with me. Four times." 

Chloe lifts her head, relieved to feel her tears staying at eye level and not fall on her cheeks, nor feed her heartbreaking words. Her heart breaks more as she sees Lucifer's expression, his tense posture, held as such by his folded hands on his knees. 

Maybe it's not _fair_ to her.

She asked for this, eager she was to talk with him; by any possible means. Besides, everyone knows that sex is the Devil's main spoken language. She knows, understands, accepts everything that this act says about him.

She knows it's fair, because she knows what these moments have said for him. 

She knows they say... _nothing._

"Talks-wise, I've definitely had better," he mutters.

"I've had better foreplay than freaking dismembered wings," she retorts. "Better than you lying in your own blood, dying at my feet! You, who hasn't a single scratch left and who ignored all my phone calls to then screw me the second I passed the elevator doors!"

Lucifer jumps to his feet, diabolical features draped in black and setting red. "I _don't_ wanna talk about it, Chloe!"

"Well, I do!"

_"Why?!"_ he shouts, throwing his hands in the air. "I'm fine, I'm here; in the flesh, in the feathers and robe… so what's the bloody point?!"

_"The point is I got SCARED!"_

A long silence follows this cry; a cry from Chloe's split heart, strongly beating in her chest, for all the fear hidden inside, everything she finally lays bare, tiny human figure in the Devil's crumpled shirt. 

"I'm scared, Lucifer." 

He's not saying a word. 

_Silence means consent._

Or understanding? Maybe he will. 

"I'm scared of the next time," she tries to make him understand. "There'll inevitably be a next time, no matter how hard you look for a way out... There'll be, someday - in a week, a month, a year or decades. There'll be another time when you'll die again. And that day may well be the day you die for... f-for good?"

She sees, feels that he wants to protest. Lifting another hand, she begs him to shut up, to give her the benefit of the doubt for her humanly ridiculous speech. 

She hopes she's wrong.

Really. 

Three consecutive despairs are really the most she can bear. 

"I know it's impossible, but... the Devil in Heaven shouldn't be something possible either, right?" She lowered her hand, walks towards the table, one step away from the spilled alcohol on the floor right between her and Lucifer. "And if it's really impossible, if everything goes back to normal, if you end up in Hell again... it'll be my fault."

"Chloe... no. It won't. Never."

She nods, gulps. "It will, Lucifer. It's always been mine. I'll always be the one who hastens your death, who makes it real. I'm the one who makes you mortal! Who has t-... who _has to_ live with that, every day."

Chloe suddenly laughed, suddenly aware of a truth that hadn't occurred to her before. "Maybe it's for the best...."

Lucifer stares at her, perplexed. 

"For the best?" he repeats. 

"Yes," she said with a brief nod before looking around. "If I blame myself long enough, strong enough... I may end up in Hell, no matter how much I'm a walking miracle."

The very idea of her ending up in Hell with Lucifer seems hilarious to him. Chloe nevertheless notices this frightened gleam in his eyes before turning away from him; not far away, just in front of the balcony door that is still open too. 

Doors everywhere....

All open.

Hell will change that, that's for sure. 

"This is ludicrous!" he exclaims in an exaggeratedly mocking tone - so exaggerated that it doesn't even occur to Chloe to take offence. "Ludicrously 'not enough' to end up in Hell, Detective. You know that!"

She takes a deep breath, exhales slowly, eyes raised to the heavens. She laughs again, a bitter note of a truth, of an immutable fate for everyone here on earth. "I know what _you_ know, Lucifer, what the King of Hell knows. I know that many end up locked in these cells for less guilt than I currently feel."

She doesn't know yet what hers will be like, her cell; although she already has a hunch about it. If you look deep enough... there's always something to feed this good old guilt. 

Father Kinley, the glass of wine, the vial; in her hand, in Lucifer's.

Their talk - eternally sensitive around fear, this unchanging subject too.

Chloe thinks of this moment, of Lucifer facing the window, of her waiting behind him. She's thinking about how they switched roles today, but it's not that different. Not so much. 

She's still terrified, after all. 

And he's... _him._

Determined to reject any change. 

She's thinking about the other possibilities of torturing her soul. 

The sight of Eve in Lucifer's arms, he who'd bleed to death one floor below. Or he'd be crushed by tons of rubble. 

Fairly infernal vision. 

The main subject of her guilt, which makes her not turn around, that she can't blame him for blaming her. He's died so many times or almost since they've known each other - too many to be worth it. 

She sees no point in thinking more about what awaits her down there, especially when she knows exactly what's waiting for her behind that door. 

Nothing more than a continuity to this feeling. 

It doesn't matter what form it'll take. 

What matter is that it'll take one. 

Chloe didn't expect Lucifer's arms, which are now around her waist, nor his chin, which naturally leans on her shoulder, against her neck - but she lets it happen. She lets the Devil give and take this terrible fear away with a few kisses, from her neck to the line of her jaw. 

He is the King, her present and future torturer.

"You have nothing to blame yourself for, love." His lips touch her earlobe like his nose touches her hair. One of his hands pulls out a few locks, the other wraps her belly. "I'm the only one to blame, the only one who should feel guilty here. 'He' put you in this position. He did it to harm me, to make whatever He wants with me. He was The One who made me this way, literally submitted to my twisted emotions!" 

His fingers squeeze the fabric, she feels his thumb on her skin, just above the belly button. 

"Lucifer-"

"He is The One who makes me vulnerable. He wanted me to feel like I had something valuable to lose," he breathes in her neck. "He'll never leave me in peace…."

"I can understand that," she whispers back. She moves her hand over his, removes tension in his fingers that are still squeezing the fabric, nearly tearing it up. She does so before he even thinks of putting an end to this embrace, of her being on God's side. "Neither would I. Nor will I stop blaming myself for it."

"Why?"

"Because I love you."

His embrace loosened enough for Chloe to turn around. She'd want to laugh at his dazed expression, to worry about it, too. They've been together for a year now, she told him how she felt about him longer before and yet….

Yet, he keeps looking surprised?

Chloe's hands come to his face. "Because I'm suffering from this situation as much as you are. Because we're partners, because that's what it is - loving someone." 

Chloe doesn't mind his kiss; she knows he's no more trying to distract her or himself by all possible means. She knows what this gesture says before he even uses these lips for different means. "And I you."

Chloe smiles, she lets her tears touching her lips soon after hearing him. She can't remember when the first one has run down her cheek. They've been together for a year now, he told her how he felt about her longer before and yet…

Yet, she keeps crying. 

He buries his hands in her hair when he brings his forehead to hers, when he repeats these obvious words. "I love you, Chloe. I do, so much that I'll accept all of His demands," he whispers after he shuts his eyes. "It's terrifying... bloody terrifying."

"His demands?" she repeats even more softly. 

He doesn't move, doesn't hug her any less. It's a chance around which she wraps her arms, just as she does around his body. "So He asked something from you?"

No answer. 

"Lucifer... please. Tell me. Tell me about Your Father." 

His sigh makes her shiver in his arms. 

"What did He tell you?" she insists. 

"Nothing."

She shivers more once his hands leave her back.

"Absolutely nothing," Lucifer repeats, stepping aside. "The truth is… I didn't give Him a chance to talk to me. He wouldn't have let me talk, anyway." 

"What do you mean?"

Other footsteps bring him back to the couch, Chloe willingly sits beside him, legs pulled back against her chest. Although more relaxed than before, Lucifer remains as tormented as ever. She feels sorry to see these signs of anxiety on his face, the tension on his back and his hidden wings. 

She'd like to touch him again. 

She would want him to just need this to make it all go away.

"I don't know how to explain it... or if there really is anything to explain. It was... I hadn't been back there in a long time."

He smiles, the sadness in his eyes barely reached by the curve of his lips. 

She smiles in turn, silent support. 

"Maybe that's why I came back from the dead so quickly, who knows? Or was it the result of fortunate circumstances? The paramedics were remarkably efficient, almost as efficient as you were that day at the lake." He shakes his head. "But yesterday was different. I shouldn't have come back…."

"You couldn't have without your brother's intervention, yes."

"No, Chloe. I _shouldn't_ have. I was dead - way too dead for a handful of feathers to change anything."

Chloe frowns. "But-... I saw... I saw that light a-and… it healed your wounds. I hadn't dreamed this."

Busy contradicting him, Chloe remembers a detail she hadn't thought of since. What's the point of dwelling on that kind of things when Lucifer had almost died? 

Amenadiel might well have looked surprised for something other than Lucifer's resurrection, surprised by his foolish gesture just as she'd been. 

She's just getting over it. 

But he shouldn't have been, nor should he have stayed surprised after Lucifer had come back from the dead a third time. 

He's his brother. He's supposed to be more used to these things, having spent thousands of years arguing with the Devil. 

"And that's all they did," Lucifer confirms. 

"So how did you—?"

"I have no idea," he admits, completely lost. 

He gets up, walks around the table, explaining with agitated gestures and ramble; "Why would He bring me back to my old quarters and let me go the next second? What did He expect me to do? I'm no longer His brave little archangel ready to enlighten the smallest corner of the Universe, I'm no longer His So—"

Lucifer's silent. He clenches his fists. 

"I'm the Devil." 

"Not only that." 

Chloe gets up as well; it only takes a few steps for her to find his fists and turn them into hands - shaking, vulnerable. 

"You're Lucifer Morningstar. I dunno, maybe... maybe staying with me has changed your very nature? Maybe you're getting closer to a human being now? You know... by dying for nothing?" she teases him with a slight pressure on his palm. 

Maybe he's more a man to end up in Heaven than the Devil condemned to Hell? Maybe he's not ready to accept it….

Her thumb reaches his finger, moves around his ring, turned over and over again, to the point of irritating the skin underneath. Chloe knows he's not. 

He's not ready. 

Not yet. 

"And I thought my death wasn't nothing…"

"That's right. But God who might want a little talk with the Devil…" She notices how his gaze changed in something harder and she tries to stop that change with a caress along his cheek. "...who wants to talk to _His son_? That's not nothing either."

Lucifer's cheek leans into her touch, as he always does, asking for forgotten tenderness, far too soon forbidden in his existence to consider it normal. 

Deserved. 

"He rejected me." 

A whispered fact. 

A wound he never deserved. 

"I know," she says. 

"It doesn't make any sense." 

"It won't be, not until you give Him a chance to explain Himself." 

He doesn't like the idea. He's never liked it, so much that he can't sleep, that he did paperwork. To the point of cut his wings off. 

His sigh tickles her palm, which he takes before formulating his disagreement - as old as Time itself. "God doesn't explain Himself, He commands."

"Lucifer…"

He looks at her, young in that relationship of trust. 

"I don't know if this is your Father's doing. You don't know that either. Neither of us can pretend to know what God has in mind, nor that your relationship is going to change at all. But you might have a chance to go home, after all this time." She smiles. "You could be with me." 

"I already am." 

"You know what I meant." 

"I know…" he sighs. 

"Then what are you afraid of? He wouldn't let you in after all this time just for proving you're wrong about Him, would He?"

"The same as you, I guess," Lucifer reveals, although Chloe doesn't get what he means. 

The next second, Lucifer embraces her again and she doesn't blame him for it. She was no stranger to his need for contact in the most difficult moments of his life, she was asking for this, was as tormented as he was. 

Because she loves him. 

From one torment to another, from denial to reluctant acceptance of a simple truth. 

"I fear that the next time might be the last." 

Chloe chins up. He's looking straight ahead, towards the balcony door. 

"I'm not a weak Devil, but-" 

His sigh makes his body tremble against hers. Or is it she who trembles by hearing his words?

"It's... this _was_ my home, Chloe," he stammers in her hair. "It's like fighting gravity... I can't, I won't be able to fight this feeling anymore. What if I can' _t_ come back next time?"

Chloe's hands naturally find their place in his back, where his wings tremble in unison; as fearful as they are impatient to test this theory. Angel with one caress, Devil with the other. Human in her arms. 

Chloe's response is just as human. 

She couldn't answer any other way. "If so, I guess I'll have to be patient for us both."

She smiles against his chest, lets her tears caress it. 

"But we wouldn't want that, would we?"

His laughter prevents her from a shameful succession of sobs in his arms. His hands, to shake like a leaf. His lips, to say more than he really her needs to. "The question is - who'll be the most patient? Patience has never been my strong suit, as you know."

She kisses him; asking for pressing passion that moves her hands lower, making Lucifer smile against her lips. Which already makes him lose patience for a fifth opportunity to show her his astonishing stamina, to test her own patience as well, to kiss the corner of her lips, her chin, her forehead.

"I get that, yeah. But if you could at least avoid starting another rebellion in the meantime?"

His smirk is proof of change, proof that the Devil, the Rebellious as the Prodigal Son is never far away either. 

"Well, I'm the Devil, dear. No promises." 

**Epilog coming soon**

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last chapter to update, a short one. I'll update tomorrow or Sunday, I dunno (depends on when I finish the translation)  
> Anyway, I'm going to be less 'lockdowned' from next Monday, so the publication for other stories will be less regular than lately. 'Back to 'nearly' normal, guys.  
> (so happy…)
> 
> Have a nice weekend!  
> (and yes, chapter 12 of 'I will not say goodbye' is already started, hihihihihi!)


	7. Epilog

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As promised, here's the epilogue to this short multi chaptered fic. Personally, I'm really happy with the final version compared to my initial draft idea. And I'm even happier to share it with you. :) 
> 
> Thanks to all of you who read it from start to end, who commented and shared your enthusiasm for this story. 
> 
> A BIIIIIIG thanks to Alindorie for her involvement, her suggestions, her corrections, these evening sessions laughing about a certain 'robe and feathers'. I look forward to continuing this great collaboration on other projects X)
> 
> Epilog then!

**EPILOG**

* * *

  
  


It's a story as old as the hills.

As old as he is.

De facto, he's of course way beyond any carbon 14 dating, he's beyond the creation of the world of many hills that has carried this old story over time. 

In a more figurative sense, the beginning of this story is no more than his end. 

From its beginning comes the Son. A Son, he stopped to be one since he had walked through the Gates of Hell. 

With deep inhaling, Lucifer lets warmth and light enter through the door within him; wide open to everything he had refused to feel for millions of years. He might be annoyed with himself for smiling, for coming to like this... but that's the difference ; he can choose to feel as not to feel annoyed. This is all about what he _ can  _ want. 

The difference is in all these stories that claim to tell about his life, about this moment and the past ones - alone or....

Or not.

So many stories....

As old as the world, so juvenile in their understanding of things. As young as he had been before, as old as the world. 

The Devil's story.

His birth.

His quest for power, his relentless struggle against God. 

The Father who rejects the Son. 

The Son who rebels against the Father, against the Good. 

Who makes Evil his home. 

Who blames himself for having squandered his possessions on futile pleasures and comes back on his knees, begging for forgiveness. 

From an exhalation, Lucifer laughs softly, stands up. Light and Warmth find those already present in him; powerful, unchanging, born to penetrating pleasure. 

She was the first of the two to  _ penetrate _ him, wasn't she?

Another story as old as the hills that he won't mock. 

After all... 

He promised her to behave.

His hilarity dries up as this closed door grows with a presence he had refused to glimpse the first times. 

That God wants to talk to His Devilish Son is nonetheless a first in the history of stories. 

Sticking out his chest, back straight, eyes on the handle; Lucifer opens his mouth.

Whatever the world - in its questionable lifespan - may tell of him, he's not a son to regret much, not a Devil to seek quarrel nor a lover to seek solitude over all the Eternity left to live in his death. 

He's just him. 

Lucifer Morningstar. 

God is just a Father waiting at the door of His Son's bedroom.

"Come on in." 

Whatever brings him here is another story. 

THE END

* * *

_By LauraKrings_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yup - it's an 'open' ending. There will be no more than your imagination for whatever happens next. X)  
> You can pull my hair, pinch me, etcetera... in reviews/in the comment if you want XDDD.
> 
> The story was therefore based on a prompt but also (personal choice) on the parable of the 'Prodigal Son' in the Bible (Luke 15:11-32), which is more implied in this epilog. 
> 
> I also discovered a fanvid on youtube (shortly after I finished writing this last chap - nice coincidence) that captures quite well the feeling of Lucifer that I wanted to express all along this fic.   
>  [Lucifer Morningstar || "I'm not sure that I am an angel anymore." --- Lucifer [season 1-4] (de Theresa D.)

**Author's Note:**

> I'll publish one chapter a week (at least for the first 3 chaps).  
> As always, thanks for reading!  
> Share your thoughts in comments :) .


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